Hermione Granger's Diary
by Ginger5
Summary: *COMPLETE*After Hogwarts. Hermione has to face alot this summer, NEWTS results, boy troubles, barbeques and festivals. R/R!
1. Boyfriend Related Problems

Prologue  
  
Do you ever wonder how your life ended up getting so messed up? I do. All the time. You see, first there was Ron. And I loved him but when we were together we just made each other unhappy. But when we split up after I caught him kissing some skanky girl, it made me even unhappier. And then he starting going out with a pretentious Barbie doll look-alike called Veronique and my unhappiness levels shot right off the scale. I didn't think I'd ever want to get kiss-shaped with another boy, but then there was Draco Malfoy. He's Veronique's cousin-would you believe it? We hated each other to start with, but all that passionate sniping somehow turned into passionate snogging. Draco's a hard boy to pin down, sometimes I fancy him like mad, other times I hate his guts. And Ron's always there in the background. When he and Veronique went through a bad patch, I just wanted to get him back. Of course, it didn't work out. He got back with Veronique who told me in no uncertain terms that she'd have me run out of town if I ever tried it on with Ron again. And Draco was also left with some trust issues. Mainly he doesn't trust me anymore. But he still wants to sleep with me. Typical boy. I fancy him but I don't know if I'm ready to get pelvic with anyone. And as for Ron? Don't even go there.  
  
When I'm not having boy problems, I work at a café in Diagon Alley and worry how my N.E.W.T.s results will turn out. Hopefully fingers crossed. I also play guitar in an all-girl band with my friends Susan, Parvati and Lavender. And try not to trash the house while my 'rents enjoy a second honeymoon on the Florida Keys. But all I really want to do is get through the summer without any major traumas. Which isn't what happened, not even close.  
  
  
  
Chapter 1  
  
Monday 17 July  
  
I always have a better time getting ready for a party than I do once I'm actually at the party and trying to be all party-like. And although it was just a graduation bash and Draco was only coming with me 'cause I wore him down through medium of nagging. I was also really excited. So excited I'd spent most of the day looking up some decent spells to change my hair-look (I'm thinking a manicure) and I blew off the emergency money Mum left me for some new clothes and make-up. I don't know what I'm going to do if the water tank suddenly explodes but at least I look good.  
  
This summer was going to be so strange. For starters, the 'rents were away on holiday and I was trying to hold down a full-time job while I waited for the dreaded NEWTs results, and wondered about what I was going to do for, like, the rest of my life. And then there was the whole boy thing, the whole I-really-fancy-Draco-but-I-still-love-Ron nightmare that had been causing me countless sleepless nights. My life was getting way too grown-up for my liking. And as I stroked pink glittery varnish onto my toenails and wondered whether my matching hair slides and my pale pink dress was just a little too pink, I decided that tonight I was going to find my inner child and run with her. Forget being responsible and mature, tonight I was going to be irresponsible and immature.  
  
I glanced at myself in the mirror. The problem was I still looked like a kid. A lanky kid with curly brown hair and a body that still seemed to be waiting for puberty to hit, I mean on a good day I was kinda cute, but I was never going to be, well, sexy.  
  
The doorbell rang as I was sliding on my cork wedgies. I concentrated on walking sedately down the stairs and not breaking my neck (I could of Apparated but I'm haven't got my licence yet, And if you think I'm going to break the law, you must be joking!)  
  
The thought of spending four hours with Draco was doing weird things to my stomach.  
  
He had his hand raised to have another go on the doorbell when I finally managed to let him in. He was wearing narrow-legged trousers and a short- sleeved shirt with little geometric patterns on it. Draco always looked like he'd been born 40 years too late when wearing Muggle clothes. But in a good way.  
  
"You took your time," he complained with a smile, running a hand through his blond quiff, his deep blue glinting.  
  
"I was having trouble negotiating the stairs," I muttered. "I couldn't decide whether to go for functionality or fashion forwardness in my footwear choice."  
  
Sometimes Draco makes me really nervous. Being nervous makes me talk a lot. You do the maths.  
  
Draco looked me up and down. Slowly. I could feel a blush starting at my hairline and travelling all the way down to my newly varnished toes.  
  
"I see fashion forwardness won in the end," he commented archly. "Can you actually walk in those?"  
  
"Kind of."  
  
"So am I coming in or are you actually ready for the first time in our short but eventful relationship?" he asked. "You look nice, by the way. Like a strawberry milkshake."  
  
"Oh thanks, Draco," I said sullenly.  
  
"I love strawberry milkshake!" he protested with a smirk that lit up his angular features. "Stop being so touchy. Now, have you got everything; house-keys, purse, lip-gloss, wand.?"  
  
I rummaged in my bag checking off items as he mentioned them and wishing that he didn't always make me feel like a silly child that he hung out with because it amused him.  
  
"I'm good to go," I said decisively. "Do you have a Portkey?"  
  
"I thought we'd walk or Apparate. I guess I should have checked the footwear situation with you first," he smirked again. "We'll flag down a Portkey once we get onto the main road."  
  
As I wobbled down the street in my wedge heels, Draco took my elbow. He didn't do holding hands. In fact, he scorned all public displays of affection, unlike Ron who'd been happy to snog me when we queued up for class at Hogwarts and in shop doorways in Hogsmeade, and he had always reached for my hand as soon as he saw me. But Ron was the past and Draco was right now, and I didn't want to think about any possible boy-shapes that might be lurking in the future.  
  
The party was being held at a tacky nightclub as Hogwarts was closed over summer and everywhere was booked up in Hogsmeade. So we had to go to the local town area, which of course meant we were in the atmosphere of Muggles, which Draco was trying to get used to. It actually surprised me on how much Draco had changed ever since his father had been locked in Azkaban. Though he still didn't get along with Harry and Ron as much as I would like, but that's the way life is sometimes.  
  
As Draco caught sight of two bouncers on the door and gangs of muggle lads in pastel shirts, reeking of cheap aftershave who were queuing to get in, he shuddered.  
  
"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," he said.  
  
"Wait 'til you get inside," I teased. "They have plastic palm trees and a dance floor that lights up."  
  
"One of your regular haunts is it?"  
  
"Italian Tony from work had his birthday party here," I explained. "There was a massive fight and I saw this guy get glassed. It was horrible and his girlfriend was crying because there was blood on her dress."  
  
"Hermione," said Draco. "I'll give it an hour and if it sucks we're off."  
  
The bouncers unclipped the velvet rope and let us through. "You could at least pretend that you wanted to be here." I told him. "Not everyone can be as cool as you are."  
  
"That's for sure." He remarked. "What do you want to drink? One of those disgusting alcopops that you seem to love so much?"  
  
I nodded and he disappeared in the direction of the bar. Standing on my own in a nightclub is not one of my most favourite occupations. I tried to assume a nonchalant I'm-just-waiting-for-50-of-my- best-friends-to-come-back-from-the-loo pose but I was sure everybody was staring at me and thinking that I was a complete loser who had no mates.  
  
Suddenly I felt two hands squeeze my waist and I started in surprise.  
  
"Alright, gorgeous?" enquired Harry, my bestest boy bud, probably because I've been his friend for seven years and we've only been good friends and nothing else, I could trust him more than any other boy.  
  
"You look like a strawberry milkshake."  
  
I turned around and smiled at Harry; with him calling me a strawberry milkshake it didn't make me get all defensive. "I'm so glad you're here. I feel all out of sorts," I said, giving him a friendly hug.  
  
"So which of your many male admirers have you brought tonight?" Harry wanted to know.  
  
"I'm here with Draco," I said darkly. "But I'm not sure it was a good idea. I don't think he's in a party mood and he wants to go in an hour."  
  
"Oh, him." Harry replied, rolling his eyes.  
  
"He's changed a lot since."  
  
"Voldemort was defeated." Harry finished.  
  
"No, I was going to say since his dad was locked up. Since his dad was the one who was teaching him to turn out bad."  
  
"I still think he's bad though anyway."  
  
"He's alright when you get to know him a bit better," I insisted. "He's really funny."  
  
"Yeah, funny peculiar," said Harry. "And what about Ron?"  
  
"What about him? He's going out with Veronique. End of story."  
  
"And he just happens to have a summer job as a short-order cook in the café where you work!" exclaimed Harry. "Can you say coincidence?"  
  
I was just on the verge of opening my mouth to cut him dead with a crushing retort when he took my hand and dragged me towards the lit-up dance-floor that I'd been taunting Draco about. I tried to loosen Harry's grip but he was having none of it.  
  
"Harry!" I hissed. "Draco'll be looking for me."  
  
"But its Horny Horny Horny," protested Harry. "It's out song!"  
  
Harry whirled me round like we were on Come Dancing and I had no choice but to give in. That's the other thing I love about Harry. He's the only boy I can dance with without being afraid about how ridiculous we both looked.  
  
I finally managed to disentangle myself from Harry when I heard the dreaded word, "The Vengabus is coming." My feet were not happy. I was sure there were some blister-type things going on but I was more worried about Draco. I eventually found him slouched against a pillar looking like he was having the worst night of his life. My heart sank; he could get really weird about stuff like this. I hobbled over to him, hoping he wasn't going to be too angry.  
  
"Sorry, I bumped into Harry.," I began, but he smiled and handed me my lukewarm drink.  
  
"It's okay, Herm, you don't have to explain," he shouted above the music. "I like watching you dance. You really should think about going into live entertainment. As long as you don't expect me to join in."  
  
"That's something I'd like to see," I told him. There was a bit of an awkward silence as Draco just looked at me. This always seemed to happen. His conversation tails off and as I desperately think of something to say, Draco looks at me while I get more and more embarrassed. I get so flustered and aware of myself; I start to want him to kiss me more than anything else in the whole world.  
  
I could feel my cheeks flushing and I turned my head away from him. Draco gently grabbed my chin with one hand so he could see my face.  
  
"What do you want?" he enquired throatily.  
  
"I don't know," I said breathlessly. "I want to sit down and I.I'm really hot." Please kiss me, I silently begged him and I was just about to do something incredibly sappy, like plead with him to snog me, when Parvati and Lavender came over to say hello.  
  
"We interrupting anything?" Asked Parvati, sensing the atmosphere.  
  
"Hermione and I were having a moment," Draco said, putting an arm around me and pulling me closer.  
  
"Hi," I managed to get finally out. "I'm just having a bit of a hot flush."  
  
"Hmmmm, you look all weird," commented Lavender. "Like you've been on a cross-country run."  
  
"I've been dancing with Harry," I continued. "Anyway I didn't think you two were coming. It's not really our scene, is it?" They both looked a bit shifty.  
  
"What have I missed?" I said suspiciously.  
  
"We didn't think you were coming either," said Parvati.  
  
"We've come here to get a snog from every wizard we ever fancied at Hogwarts."  
  
"And we're not leaving until we do," finished Lavender fiercely.  
  
I could feel Draco tense up. "I think I'd better get Hermione out of here before you two give her any ideas," he said smoothly. "I hope you've brought some lip balm, it sounds like you're going to need it."  
  
I could tell that Parvati and Lavender weren't sure whether Draco was laughing with them or at them, and to tell you the truth I didn't either.  
  
"Hey, rewind," I said, flashing Draco a warning look.  
  
"We've only just got here. I want to spend some time with my friends."  
  
Draco shrugged in a fairly good impression of someone who was fine with the idea, but I could see a flash of annoyance on his face.  
  
"I'll go and see Matt then while you compare nail varnish or whatever it is you girls talk about," and he sauntered off in the direction of the DJ booth where one of his Slytherin friends from Hogwarts was hanging out.  
  
Parvati and Lavender visibly relaxed. "I'm surprised he doesn't have you magically tagged," sniped Lavender as we grabbed a booth.  
  
"I can't believe I'm seeing a boy who all my mates loathe," I said miserably. "I know he can be sarcastic but he can be really sweet too. Honest."  
  
"Are you trying to convince us or yourself?" asked Lavender as she took a sip of her lurid pink cocktail.  
  
"I'm really confused about the way he makes me feel half the time." I confessed. "When he gets all toxic on me I end up wanting to kiss him."  
  
"Classic evasion tactic," explained Parvati, whose uncles a psychologist. "You think that when he kisses you, he'll stop being all arsy. Whereas he's being arsy 'cause he knows it makes you uncomfortable and then he gets to be the one in control. Do you know what I mean?"  
  
"No, not really," I said, rolling my eyes.  
  
"She means he's a complete control freak, Hermione," said Lavender in an exasperated voice. "You practically had to beg for his permission to spend time with us."  
  
"It's complicated," I said trying to explain. "You know when I had that mini-fling with my ex.,"  
  
"Ron?"  
  
"Yeah, well it left Draco convinced that I wasn't the most trustworthy girl, 'cause I was kinda seeing him at the same time," I finished unhappily. "You must think I'm a terrible person, like, boy-obsessed or something."  
  
"Everyone has boy issues," said Lavender consolingly. "I once had three boys on the go 'cause I couldn't make up my mind which one I fancied."  
  
"But you're with Draco now right?" asked Parvati. "So he should get over it."  
  
I gave a deep sigh. "But he refuses to acknowledge the fact that we're practically going steady. He just says that we should keep it loose, but."  
  
"But?" prompted Parvati.  
  
"He reckons that if we are going out then we should, you know, um, have sex, but I'm not sure," I managed to stammer. "It seems like a lousy reason."  
  
"Right!" agreed Lavender. "It's one thing to have sex 'cause you're in a serious relationship with someone you care about. But to do it with someone in the hope that he might actually admit that you're already having a relationship, well that's just stupid."  
  
"Hermione what the hell are you doing with him?" Parvati demanded.  
  
"I don't know," I moaned. "I know he can be difficult but it's exciting just the same."  
  
"Boys can be such jerks," said Lavender feelingly.  
  
There was a moment's silence as we all contemplated the jerkdom of the male species. I looked up to see Draco looming over me.  
  
"Hermione, please can we go?" he begged. I looked over at Parvati and Lavender. They were no help.  
  
"See you at rehearsal tomorrow then," they both chirped and slid out of the booth. "Right let's find our first victim," Lavender added.  
  
"Good luck!" I called after them.  
  
Which left just me and Draco. He ran a finger down my cheek, "Let's get the hell out of here." We got another Portkey back to my house and the minute I opened the front door I kicked my wedgies off.  
  
"Ow!" I whimpered. "My feet are killing me."  
  
Draco laughed and followed me into the lounge. I made some tea and he dumped all the cushions off the settee so we could sprawl out on the floor and listen to the WWN (Wizarding Wireless Network).  
  
We drank our tea in companionable silence. When there aren't any other people around Draco completely chills out. He's funny and we talk about books and films and play 'Anywhere But Here' which involves describing in great detail where you'd be and what you'd be wearing if you were actually, erm, anywhere but here. Draco's even better at 'Anywhere But Here' than I am. And Draco always strokes Crookshanks, my cat, until she's all purred out and it makes me think I could really love him.  
  
Ok, I can't talk to Draco like I used to talk to Ron. I mean, I could tell Ron anything, all the secret stuff that I'd never tell anyone else and I know that he'd understand and wouldn't judge me. I never go that deep with Draco 'cause on some level I know that the closer I let him get, the more he'll be able to hurt me someday. Could my thought patterns be any skewier?  
  
By that time a classic song by the Weird Sisters had finished, I was stretched out on the carpet while Draco lay over me, his hands gently pinning my arms to my side while he nibbled my bottom lip. He let go of my wrists and trailed a hand down my side until I felt him start to push the skirt of my dress up my leg. I kind of blissed out as he tickled the underside of my knee but when his hand reached mid-thigh I tugged away. Draco behaved himself for a while and concentrated on kissing me until I was gasping for breath but as he reached under me and started to inch my zip down.I sat up and pushed him away.  
  
"No!" I yelped.  
  
"No?" he asked, reaching for me again but I brushed his hands away. Draco got to his feet and gave me an annoyed look.  
  
"I'm not going to wait forever, Hermione," he said. "You have to lose it sometime, you might as well lose it with me."  
  
"It just doesn't seem right," I tried to explain. "I'm not ready, it's too soon."  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. "Is it me?" he wanted to know. "Are you scared?"  
  
"I don't know. I suppose so. Sometimes I think you're only interested in me 'cause, you know, you want to."  
  
"God, you can't even say it," said Draco sounding really impatient. "People have sex, it's no big deal."  
  
"Well, it is to me," I muttered. "I want it to be special. I want to lose my virginity with someone who lo.who really cares for me."  
  
Draco shook his head. "I've gotta go," he said. "I'll owl you."  
  
I scrambled to my feet. "Don't be mad with me," I begged, trying to give him a hug. He gently but firmly held me off.  
  
"I'll owl you," he repeated and he vanished before I could say another word. 


	2. Work and Band Practise

Chapter 2 Tuesday 18 July  
  
I didn't sleep at all. In fact, I spent most of the night tossing and turning and whacking my pillows as I tried to get comfy. All I could think about was what Draco said. Maybe he was right, maybe I was making a big fuss out of nothing. In fact, when I thought about it I realised that I was the only girl I knew who was still a virgin. Apart from Susan's sister Penny, and she was only 15 or something.  
  
It wasn't like I was worried that it was going to hurt (well, not completely) but the longer I held onto my virginity (I hate that word), the more difficult it was to think about actually bumping uglies with someone. And although Draco got me all hot and bothered and occasionally I felt like I really loved him, but was he the person I wanted to have sex with? I mean, everyone says you never forget your first time and 50 years from now did I really want to have memories of Draco going where no boy-shape had gone before?  
  
But what really bothered me was knowing that the person I really wanted (and, yup, his name begins with R and ends in N) didn't want me back. Or, at least, was giving every appearance of someone who didn't want me back. All this nocturnal soul-searching left me feeling sleep-deprived and in a foul mood. I finally managed to drag myself out of bed and into a cold shower which a) did nothing to make me feel more awake and b) left me feeling more bad-tempered. I was actually kinda sorry that The Mothership wasn't around so I could have unleashed some of my aggression by snarling at her before I went to work.  
  
I pulled on some slouchy boy trousers and a battered robe 'cause it made some crazy sense to look horrible as I felt, shoved my still aching feet into trainers and scraped my hair back into a ponytail before stomping towards the fireplace and taking the floo network to Diagon Alley.  
  
Even though I'd managed to tut loudly at slow-walking old witches and pulled faces at any unsuspecting small kid who'd dared to even cross my line of vision, I still felt hissy when I got from the Leaky Cauldron to the Coven Café.  
  
And there was Ron looking all foxy even with in chef robes on and his faded jeans. He gave me a lazy wave and smile from the serving hatch but I ignored him and grabbed my order pad and a Quik-Spell Quill and marched over to a couple of members of Ministry of Magic who were waiting to be served.  
  
It wasn't my fault. When you're felling icky and some stupid green suit tells you to "cheer up love, it might never happen" they're lucky that you don't chuck their breakfast special into their lap. Anna, my boss, hurried over just as the fully-ladened plate I was levitating was beginning to tip lap wards as I jerked my wand. She ordered me into the kitchen for the rest of the day. I banged open the kitchen door and glared at Ron, Italian Tony, (the other chef) and Winky the house-elf (who assigned to cleaning dishes and tabletops). Ron looked hurt but Tony just laughed.  
  
"I make you some black coffee, Hermione," he laughed. "And you don't speak if you don't have anything nice to say, huh?"  
  
I gave Tony a look, which just made him laugh even harder as I opened a loaf of sliced white and attacked the first piece with my wand using a butter charm. We worked in silence for an hour until Tony announced that he was off to Gringotts and sauntered out.  
  
"I leave you in charge Hermione," he announced. "But no picking on the new boy."  
  
The minute Tony was out of the door, I turned and glared at Ron.  
  
"You couldn't get a summer job somewhere else, could you?" I hissed at him. "You have to find work where you can bug me for the next eight weeks."  
  
Ron looked hurt but I was immune to his puppy-dog eyes thang. "I've known Anna for ages. I have lived next door to her for three years," he pointed out mildly.  
  
"Why can't you work in the Ministry or Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Shop during summer?" I demanded.  
  
"Can you stop pointing that wand at me?" said Ron nervously. "They don't need any more full-time staff at the ministry or at my brother's joke shop. I'm behind my rent so Anna said I could help out here. Mind you, if I'd known you were going to be such charming company maybe I'd have started working here ages ago."  
  
"Oh, ha ha," I said sarcastically. "Anyway, I didn't know you could cook."  
  
Ron looked incredibly uncomfortable and shifted his gaze to the griddle where two mis-shaped sausages were doing a good impersonation of charcoal.  
  
Although I hadn't thought it possible I started to grin.  
  
"Oh, my God!" I squealed.  
  
"Leave it!" said Ron warningly.  
  
I ignored him. "You can't cook," I crowed. "You can't even make a decent cup of coffee! How did you think you were going to manage as a short order chef?"  
  
"Are you going to carry on like this all day or are you going to help me?" asked Ron with a bite to his voice as the sausages started to smoke.  
  
"I guess you're on buttering and slicing duties," I told Ron as I gently pushed him out of the way and started to scrape the meaty mess into the bin.  
  
I guess Ron was worried that I was going to 'fess his lack of culinary expertise to Anna, which I wasn't (Ok, I was in a bad mood but I wasn't completely evil) 'cause he kept trying to be really nice to me. In between making up the sandwiches for lunch he kept offering me endless cups of tea and muffins while all I could do was bitch about how I was going to stink of bacon fat all summer and try to keep my eyes open. Sometimes it frightens me how much I can enjoy behaving like a complete cow.  
  
In the end even Ron, who always has the patience of a saint in the face of my vast moodiness, gave up his attempts to jolly me up. I think the final straw was when he asked me if I was going to any festivals this summer and I told him to shut up and butter faster. By the time Susan came to help with lunchtime rush I was feeling more human but Ron was too scared to even look at me.  
  
I have to admit I'd been worrying about Susan meeting Ron for the first time. She was my friend. I'd worked really hard to make new friends after breaking up with Ron. As break-ups go it had been particularly icky, especially when I'd decided to ignore the existence of his new girlfriend, Veronique, and started snogging him again. And the secret snogs also led to me falling out with my friend Cho Chang who couldn't handle being friends with me and Ron and Veronique. So I guess it was no big surprise that all my new friends had nothing to do with my old friends and the thought of Ron and Susan even being in the same room made me feel queasy. Not least because she knew I still had feelings for him, the kind of feelings that I'd tried to bury really deep so no-one would know they were there.  
  
  
  
But what do I know? After ten minutes, the pair of them were acting like they'd been friends for ever. It was enough to make me puke.  
  
  
  
  
  
Every time she came into the kitchen with an order she'd address Ron in fluent Ali G-ese and he'd answer her back. If I heard either of them say, 'Is 'cause I is a ciabatta?" one more time I was going to commit deadly assault with my wand.  
  
After lunch I went on my break and managed to grab an hour's snooze on some sacks of flour in the store room. When I surfaced I felt human again. I bounded back into the kitchen and peered into the cooler block.  
  
"I'm starving!" I announced to Ron who was magically producing mayonnaise into little bowls. "Have we got any chicken left?"  
  
"Oh hi Hermione, your evil twin was looking for you earlier," he said dryly.  
  
I pulled a face. "I'm sorry," I said in a small voice. "I didn't sleep very well last night."  
  
Ron gave me an all-penetrating look. "You don't look like you've slept well in ages. You've got huge shadows under your eyes."  
  
"Cheers for that, tact-boy."  
  
"It makes you look all mysterious," backtracked Ron fast.  
  
"Like you've been staying up all night to write intense poetry."  
  
It was impossible to be mad at Ron for long. "Nothing that exotic," I told him with a smile. "I've just got a lot on my mind." Like you and Draco who just happens to be your girlfriend's cousin, I added to myself. But Ron was nodding and making some sympathetic comment about my NEWT results and how he knew I'd ace them. I started making up the mixture for tomorrow's muffins and sang along with the WWN while Ron helped Winky do the washing up. I looked up from my stirring to find him watching me with a sad little smile.  
  
"What?" I asked defensively.  
  
He shook his head. "It's weird seeing you in work mode, that's all. I forget how capable you are."  
  
"You and Draco both have a vested interest in treating me like a little witch half the time," I muttered darkly.  
  
"Is he being his usual overbearing self?" asked Ron with a cold edge to his voice.  
  
I gulped. "I don't want to talk about him." There was a moment's silence before I continued. "Anyway, yup, I'm a very capable witch, as my mum is always telling me, and I shall be taking over the world in approximately two years, three months and 17 days."  
  
Ron chuckled at that and made some sarky remark about how he expected me to win my first powerful coup before the end of the summer.  
  
We had such a good time that afternoon. We didn't mention Veronique or Draco, just pratted about and sang along to the wireless. And as I walked home I wished that it could be just me and Ron again. Like how it was before but better 'cause I'd done loads of growing up since then. I didn't know how I was going to get through the summer to see him every day. Plus the weather was starting to get really hot and I was probably going to die from chip fat inhalation.  
  
Luckily I was saved from a big gloom at the thought of spending summer in Derby by our band rehearsal that night. I'd had a nap when I got home and a long vanilla-scented soak in the bath, so I was feeling no pain.  
  
When I got to the rehearsal room that we always used, Parvati and Lavender were already there, looking quite perky for two girls who'd been on a wizardhunt exactly 24 hours earlier. And Penny, Susan's freaky little sister who I've known for three months and still haven't actually heard speak, was also in attendance and trying to melt into the wall as usual.  
  
"Hey colleagues," I said as I knelt on the floor to open my guitar case. "And how many guys did you pull?" I added as Parvati plonked herself on a stool next to me.  
  
"Eight or nine," was the casual reply. "I lost count to tell you the truth."  
  
"That's so skanky!" I shuddered. "What about Lavender?"  
  
"She ended up copping off with that DADA Ravenclaw boy she's fancied for the last six months," groaned Parvati. "And she's spent all the day by her window waiting for him to owl her."  
  
"Been there, done that, still working through the pain," I muttered.  
  
"So what did you and that Malfoy-boy get up to?" Parvati asked.  
  
I winced. "Had a big argument about why I wouldn't shag him.  
  
"So the usual then?" laughed Parvati.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Are you two going to gossip all day or are we going to work on songs for our first platinum selling album?" called Susan from the stage where she'd been fiddling with her wand to make her voice sound a few times louder that it was.  
  
You know, I think I'm turning into a rock chick on the quiet. Even though the guitar gives me back ache and makes my fingers hurt, I'm really getting into throwing rock-god shapes as I actually make proper chords come out of my guitar. And I even like singing (well, shouting if I'm being honest) on the choruses and doing harmonies while Susan screams out lyrics about how crap boys are and how she really wants to buy a Super Speedo Broom. I spent most of the rehearsal thrusting my hips and brandishing my guitar, and trying to jump off the drum riser and master A-flat diminished at the same time. I never thought I'd say it but I wish I'd taken some decent music classes.  
  
And I also love being in a witch-shaped space. Hanging out with witches not hanging out with wizards for which I'm eternally grateful. It's weird but being forced to join this band by Susan has turned me into the fourth member of a gang and her and Parvati and Lavender have become my best friends. I'd never really had girl buds at school apart from Ginny. I remember my old gang; Me, Ginny, Harry and Ron.  
  
But it was cool having a just girl gang. I'd never burp in front of Ron or try and turn a Pringle over in my mouth while Harry was watching, but I can do all those things with these girls and it just makes them like me more.  
  
We finished the rehearsal with our killer song, Fang Vamps Suck, homage to Buffy The Vampire Slayer (hey I still watch muggle TV!), I'd just managed to complete my guitar solo without making mistakes and was concentrating on shouting, "Mr Pointy's coming to get you, fang boy!" at the top of my voice when I realised that Draco was slouched nonchalantly against a stack of wooden chairs by the door.  
  
I immediately hit a bum note earning me a glare from Susan. And I suddenly thought, get over it, girl! I was in a band. I had a job. I had a life away from him. And he could deal with the real Hermione instead of the embarrassed little witch I became when I was with him. I took that thought and ran with it; or rather I stepped onto the drum riser for my final guitar flourish and jumped off as the song reached its noisy and dramatic final note.  
  
There was a moment's silence while we tried to catch our collective breath and then it was broken by the sound of Draco clapping. Not a sardonic slow hand-clap but proper applause.  
  
"That was fantastic," he exclaimed as he walked towards us. I pulled off my guitar and looked at the others.  
  
"We're not really ready for an audience," Susan said, but she couldn't stop herself. "Did you really think we were good? 'Cause we don't want to be, like, a sad witchy band but I think we kick ass in a tuneful way."  
  
"I thought you were brilliant. All of you," said Draco with more enthusiasm than I'd ever heard him muster before. "Edgy but commercial too. Kinda like this band called The Vamps that my elder brother was really into."  
  
"I love The Vamps," yelped Susan.  
  
And I was like, Draco has an elder brother? And he's actually being genuinely nice and well, unMalfoyish to one of my best friends? Must be a Full Moon.  
  
Draco looked at me. "I never knew you could play so well," he said quietly. "You looked so cool. Just like the Weird Sisters, but not so scary."  
  
I shrugged and made "aw shucks" type noises. It was like little green men, leaving someone who looked and sounded exactly like Draco in his place, but was still working on the attitude, had abducted the real Draco.  
  
He helped us pack all our gear away in the rehearsal complex's storeroom and insisted on taking us to the pub to buy us a congratulatory round. Susan sent Penny off home 'cause we'd never get served with such an obviously underage witch in tow, and we travelled by floo to the Leaky Cauldron. Draco even held my hand in public and kept shooting me admiring glances and smiling at me. I guess I should have let him come to rehearsals more often.  
  
He was an utter angel. Susan loved him because he knew about all the bands she was into. And Parvati and Lavender were warming to him because he was their "in" to a world of foxy DADA wizards (meaning young Aurors) and even I managed to forget what a pig he'd been on the night before as he squeezed my hand and generally acted like I was a princess among girl-shapes. It was a complete revelation.  
  
I broke up all the mutual admiration that was wafting about at ten o'clock when I said that I was going.  
  
"Oh, stay, Hermione," whined Susan. "It's early."  
  
"I've got to be at work by 8.30 all this week," I reminded her. "It's OK for you, you don't have to be in 'til lunchtime."  
  
"Oh," she continued to whimper. Just then Lavender's owl rapped from outside a nearby window and Lavender ran outside to read her message.  
  
"I smell Auror-boy," said Parvati tartly as I stood up and pulled on my cloak.  
  
"Well, I'll see you tomorrow," I said to Susan, "And I'll see you two soon," I said to Draco and Parvati. Draco was having none of it. "You're getting the floo network home?"  
  
I nodded. "Yeah, oh I don't have any floo powder spare." Draco got up, "I'll take you to the nearest Port Key if you want?"  
  
I ignored Parvati and Susan's raised eyebrows and waved them as Draco slung an arm round my shoulder and we walked out of the door. I knew I was safe 'cause snogging in streets was not Draco's style but he did hold my hand while we looked for a Portkey.  
  
"I don't suppose you're going to let me come home with you?" he eventually asked with a half smile.  
  
"Hmmm, you suppose right," I told him.  
  
He gave me a mock punch on the chin. "But you'll think about what I said last night, won't you?"  
  
I rolled my eyes. "Oh don't start," I groaned. "Look we've had a really nice evening, don't ruin it."  
  
"I'm not," he protested. "I just know we'd be great together. I'd make it really good for you."  
  
"There's a Portkey," I said gratefully as my wand lit up pointing to an empty Smarties tube underneath a bench. I turned to him. "Just give me some time, OK?"  
  
He bent down and pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth. "Make it soon, Hermione." 


	3. Shocking News

Chapter 3 Sunday 23 July  
  
Life kind of got back to normal during the next week. I worked and tried to pretend that I could handle spending chunks of time with Ron. I rehearsed with the band. And I waited for Draco to owl. And waited. And waited. I guess I could have owled him but I was determined to win this round. So with all this working and longing and rehearsing and waiting, the days just drifted by. On Sunday, just as I was attempting to get out of bed in time for the 'Enders omnibus, the flames erupted in the fireplace.  
  
I quickly came over to the fireplace, even though I was still stupid with sleep, I was awake enough to feel a tiny flicker of hope. Maybe it was Draco. But it wasn't. It was Cho.  
  
"Hermione? Did I wake you?" Cho's head said as it appeared in the flames.  
  
"Yeah you did actually," I mumbled. "I was going to get up soon anyway."  
  
"Well it is one o'clock," she pointed out with a touch of irritation.  
  
There was a moment's silence.  
  
"So how have you been?" I finally asked, but by the look of her face she wasn't in the mood for small-talk.  
  
"I need to talk to you," Cho said baldly. "Can you meet me?"  
  
"If it's about Ron, then no," I snapped. "We just work together."  
  
"What's Ron got to do with it?" she asked. "Or is that your conscience?"  
  
"Cho, I'm not in the mood for cryptic puzzles."  
  
"OK, sorry," she sighed. "I'll meet you by the lake in. can you be ready in an hour?"  
  
"Yeah," I agreed in a resigned voice and hung up the connection. I didn't know what Cho wanted but I knew it couldn't be good.  
  
Cho used to be the cool, elder sister I'd never had and now her fire-code wasn't even on my speed dial. It wasn't like we'd had a big argument and stopped being friends.  
  
It was worse than that-we'd drifted apart. You could say it started when Ron and I were sneaking around together a few months ago while I was still involved with Draco too. Cho had not been impressed. The last time I'd seen her she'd made lots of sly remarks about love triangles. I'd never bothered to call her after that. There didn't seem to be any point. Especially after Veronique told me that if I ever attempted to split her and Ron up again she'd make sure none of their crowd ever spoke to me. Well, newsflash, none of that crowd talk to me anyway. Apart from Ron, Harry and Draco, which just takes me back to square one.  
  
And then there was the whole Ginny thing, which I could only explain if I had a spare couple of years. Let's just say the Ginny thing broke me and Ron up in the first place-and it was partly Cho's fault.  
  
So it wasn't any wonder that I was feeling sick as I walked to the local park.  
  
It was really hot, the sun was glaring down and I was glad I'd smothered myself in sun block before I left the house. It was way too hot to wear anything than a loose cotton dress, definitely a no muggle-made fibres day. Trying to put off the icky situation a bit longer, I stopped to buy an ice- cream from the van at the park gates but I was just delaying the inevitable. Cho was waiting for me by the bridge, and I tried to casually stroll towards her as if her call hadn't freaked the hell out of me.  
  
"Hey," she said pensively.  
  
"Hey," I replied through a mouthful of vanilla Mr Whippy.  
  
We walked around the park lake and made polite conversation about the band and Cho's job in the Sport's and Regulations department in the Ministry of Magic. This used to be the witch who I could talk about anything with and now we were having serious problems trying to sustain a five-minute conversation. Even her hair was different.  
  
I couldn't bear it any longer. "What's all this about, Cho? I asked. "We haven't spoken in months so something must be wrong if you suddenly need to talk to me."  
  
Cho pulled a face. "I'm going to get sunburnt." Cho always reckoned she had Elf (sensitive to sunrays) blood in her veins. She was the whitest person I'd ever seen, apart from, like, Veronique, so I pointed to a bench under the shade of a willow tree.  
  
"Let's go and sit down."  
  
I looked at her curiously as she sat down. Even though it was easily 90 degrees. Cho was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt under her strappy vest.  
  
"Aren't you hot?" I said.  
  
There was a pause. "No." There was a longer pause, which seemed to last most of the afternoon. "I'm pregnant."  
  
"What?" I hadn't been expecting this.  
  
"I'm four weeks late, Hermione and I'm usually regular to the minute," Cho said bitterly.  
  
"Oh," I was stumped for what to say. "So are you and Harry pleased?"  
  
She gave me a furious look. "Do I look pleased? I'm 18, I've just started my career, I'm still living with my parents. I think it's safe to say that I'm not exactly jumping for joy."  
  
"I'm sorry," I muttered. "How did it happen?"  
  
"How do you think it happened?"  
  
I blushed. "I know how it happened, but I thought you were using some kind of protection." Cho slumped in her seat. "It spilt. And I didn't have any time to get any emergency contraception. I was really busy with work and stuff. I thought it would be alright." She looked so utterly miserable sat there that even though we'd stopped hanging out I put an arm around her.  
  
"Cho it'll be alright," I said. "Harry loves you to death."  
  
She twisted out of my hug. "It won't be alright. He won't talk about it; he just pretends that it isn't happening. I can't talk to him about whether I'm going to have a termination or keep it or anything. He changes the subject."  
  
"Maybe you could talk to Ron, get him to have a word with Harry," I suggested nervously, not really wanting to mention the R word.  
  
"I don't want to talk to Ron about it.boy.girl stuff, urgh," Cho tailed off. "I wondered whether you'd talk to Harry."  
  
"Me?" I squeaked. "Why me?"  
  
"'Cause your one of his best friends." Cho said.  
  
"I wouldn't even know what to say to him."  
  
"Look, you just go round to their flat, pretend you need to see Draco or something and then mention that you've bumped into me and you're worried about me and you think."  
  
"You've thought this all out, haven't you?" I interrupted. "You want me to go and tell your boyfriend that you're upset about.that.I mean, what do you actually think I could say to him that would make any difference?"  
  
"I don't know," snarled Cho. "You think if I knew what to do I'd ever have called you? You're the last person I wanted to call, believe me!"  
  
I could feel icy shivers tracing a path down my spine.  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Well, Hermione you haven't been much of a friend in the past have you?" said Cho. "You treated Ron like hell when you were going out with him, you tried to spilt up his relationship with Veronique even though you could see that they were happy and then you stopped talking to me because I actually had the audacity to be friends with Ron's girlfriend."  
  
It was like having a bucket of cold water thrown in my face. Yeah, those were the bare facts but there was so much more to it that that. I didn't even have the energy to argue with Cho. How could I explain to her I'd done all those stupid, crazy things because when I lost Ron I felt as if someone had reached into my ribcage and plucked out my heart.  
  
"You can think what you like," I told her quietly. "It's all history now and it's over between Ron and me anyway."  
  
"Oh, are you going to cry now Hermione?" taunted Cho.  
  
"Isn't that what you usually do when it all gets too much?"  
  
"Maybe I've changed," I said. "And maybe you have too. When did you become such a hippogriff? Look, I'm sorry that you were caught in the middle of me and Ron and Veronique and I'm sorry that we don't talk any more and I'm sorry that you're pregnant, but I'm not a bad person. I had reasons for doing what I did."  
  
Cho looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. "You have changed," she said slowly. "You used to be really sweet."  
  
"I'm going," I announced, standing up. "Don't take your problems out on me."  
  
Cho caught hold of my wrist and tugged me back. "I'm sorry. It just makes me sad. You used to be all innocent and sparkly. It's why I don't hang out with you now 'cause you never really smile anymore. It's like you're hiding behind this wall you built up."  
  
Cho knew me too well. "No I don't," I denied desperately. "I'm still me. I got messed over Ron and it's taken me a while to get through it. But I smile, I smile all the time, you're just not around to see it."  
  
And I should have asked Cho about pregnancy tests and if she'd seen a doctor but all I said was, "So couldn't you have asked Veronique to talk to Harry? I mean, you guys hang out all the time."  
  
Cho pulled a face. "I don't really want to talk about Veronique with you but she can be a little tactless sometimes, and she and Harry don't really get on."  
  
"OK," I said. "I'll go and see him but I'm not promising anything." I didn't know why I was so troubled about talking to Harry, after all he was my best friend, maybe it's because Harry's never dealt with something like this before. It seemed quite funny inside in a way, Harry can handle defeating the Dark Lord, Voldemort but this seems like a whole different matter.  
  
I could also see how hurt and defenceless Cho seemed, besides I missed her and if this got us halfway back to being friends then it had to be a good thing.  
  
If I'd gone to meet Cho with a heavy heart, then the walk round to the lads' flat was even worse. It was a crazy idea and no good would come out of it, I thought as I rang on their doorbell. Cho had reckoned that Harry would be in on his own and thankfully she was right.  
  
"Hi Hermione, Draco's out," he said when he saw me standing on the doorstep. "Or did you come round to see Ron? You didn't, did you?" he added uneasily.  
  
I kind of laughed on the inside. Harry seems so sober now than he was that night in the nightclub. He looks really troubled though, so maybe that was the reason for the serious face.  
  
I managed a smile. "No, I came round to see you. Can I come in or shall I just stand on the doorstep?"  
  
It took a while for Harry to make a cup of tea and clear Ron's owl, Pigwidgeon out of the room (Pig had been flying around the room like it belonged in St. Mungo's).  
  
We started talking about the weather for some strange reason, but eventually we were sitting down and I started to launch into my prepared speech. But as I started to stutter about bumping into Cho and how she seemed really depressed I could see Harry fidgeting and not really getting it, so I decided to just let him have it. I told him that Cho was beside herself with worry and that he was being a complete wuss and if he really loved Cho he'd be supportive and if she did decided to have the baby he was proving that he'd be really crap daddy material. It took me a good ten minutes but when I finally ran out of steam, Harry was looking very shame-faced.  
  
"But she hasn't even done a pregnancy test," was all he could think to say.  
  
"Well go and buy one then," I shouted. "And get her a bunch of flowers while you're at it."  
  
He was already on his feet and scooping up his keys when Ron suddenly walked in. Harry and I whirled around and I guess we both looked guilty because Ron said in a suspicious voice, "What's going on?"  
  
Harry shot me a warning glance. He didn't really want his best friend to know about the pregnancy thing; also me and Harry being in this flat alone seemed really suspicious. "Hermione was just passing and she needed to, um, well she'd been meaning to, well."  
  
"I was looking for Veronique!" I suddenly said. Where the hell did that come from? Ron looked even more wary.  
  
"And why would that be?"  
  
I looked to Harry for some help but he shrugged helplessly. I turned back to Ron. "I needed to see her because I'm having a. barbecue!" He was never going to buy this. "Yeah, I'm having a barbecue and I wondered whether she wanted to come!"  
  
Ron arched an eyebrow and my heart started pumping painfully fast.  
  
"So you could have told me about it tomorrow at the café."  
  
Harry decided to give me some help as he disappeared out the door. "You know what Hermione's like, she gets an idea and goes with it."  
  
Ron was still standing in the middle of the room. "Hmmm, you always were impulsive," he said softly. "It used to keep me on my toes."  
  
The atmosphere had changed. Now Harry was gone, the air in the room seemed to sizzle in a way that had nothing to do with the heat of the day. Ron was looking at me in a really sultry way that made me very aware of the thinness of my dress and my bare legs and even by the way my toes were peeking out of my clumpy Dr Scholls.  
  
"So, anyway. I bumped into Cho and we hadn't really had a chat for ages," I started burbling to fill the uncomfortable silence and because I still wasn't sure if Ron was convinced by the whole Veronique invitation thing. "And we decided it would be cool to have a barbecue and we should have it at my place 'cause, y'know, 'rents off the premises, and then we thought it would be good if it was just witches/girls and it would be a chance for me and Veronique to get to know each other."  
  
Ron put a finger to my lips and I jumped back like he'd burnt me.  
  
"What did you do that for?" I demanded in a wobbly voice.  
  
"I thought you were going to pass out if you didn't stop to take a breath soon," Ron said huskily. "You always talk to much when you get nervous. Am I making you nervous?"  
  
"Of course not," I said but you could hear my heart thudding in the next county. "I should be going." Ron and I hadn't been alone in the same room since Veronique's ultimatum and now I knew why. 'Cause I couldn't trust myself with Ron and I couldn't trust him either. And if his flirting led to a kiss and if that kiss got discovered, it would be me that got a Hippogriff-size of grief.  
  
"Can't you stay for a drink?" Ron asked pleadingly.  
  
"It's too hot to go racing round the streets of Derby." I dithered. "Well, I don't."  
  
"Oh, c'mon Hermione," drawled Ron. "We have some pumpkin juice and some chilled Butterbeer in the fridge and ice cubes and a fan."  
  
Of course I stayed. I hated myself for being such a pushover but I was greedy for Ron's company.  
  
He moved the fan (which is operated not by electricity but by magic, of course) so that when we sat on the sofa we got blasts of delicious cold air wafting over us. The breeze lifted Ron's red hair and I itched to stroke it.  
  
It looked like he was still cutting it himself with any sharpish implement he could find. It was all tufty. I stole surreptitious glances at him as the fan moulded his robes to his lean body and his mouth wore a special half smile that he always had when he talked.  
  
And we did talk, like the months we'd been apart had melted away to nothing. Even when Ron and I talked about silly things like the dress I wanted to buy or the Weasley Twins; Fred and George and their new joke inventions, the conversation meant more than the things we were actually talking about.  
  
"You're not Ok, are you, Herm?" Ron suddenly said. "I know there's something wrong."  
  
And there were loads of things that were wrong, like me angsting about my NEWT results and my future and whether I should have intercourse with Draco, but what was really bothering me was the chat I had with Cho earlier.  
  
I picked a tiny scab on my knee. "It was something that Cho said before." I muttered. "Do you think I've changed? Do you think I pretend to be someone I'm not?"  
  
I was curled up in one corner of the sofa while Ron was sprawled over the remaining three quarters. He shifted his long body so he was right against me, looking intently at my face. I could have drowned in the depth of his chocolate brown eyes.  
  
"Everybody changes," he said carefully.  
  
"She said I never smiled anymore and that I used to be sparkly and stuff," I whispered. "I s'pose she thinks I've turned into a really hard-faced hippogriff."  
  
Ron reached out and stroked a loose tendril of my hair behind my ear. "I think if you've changed it's because you got hurt. And I know I was the one who hurt you and let you take the blame. We've never really talked about it, have we?"  
  
I tried to pull his hand away form my face but before I could let go he clasped my fingers in his.  
  
"What's the point Ron?" I said with a sigh. "You were with Veronique then, you're with her now. I knew that all that sneaking around we were doing was wrong but I didn't do anything to stop it."  
  
"Neither did I," Ron reminded me gently. "And I knew that Draco and Veronique were getting at you and I just let that happen. Do you remember when Veronique and I came round to see and she said all those horrible things and I just stood there and let her? I hated myself."  
  
"But I practically threw myself at you on at least, like, five different occasions," I protested.  
  
"And I could have made more of an effort to stop you but I didn't," admitted Ron fiercely, squeezing my hand tighter. "And when Malfoy started coming on to you, the thought of him touching you just made me so angry."  
  
"But it's all in the past now, isn't it?" I said. "You're going out with Veronique and I'm going out with Draco -well sort of."  
  
"I just want you to know that I'm sorry for all the times I acted like a complete git," Ron was saying when we heard a key turn in the lock and Draco talking to someone who was down the street. We both exchanged horrified looks.  
  
"He'll kill me if he finds me here with you," I hissed. Before I could think straight Ron was tugging me to my feet and covering me with Harry's invisibility cloak and to keep things safe I slide behind the sofa, so nobody would bump into me.  
  
"Stay there and don't make a sound," Ron ordered quietly. I shifted uncomfortably and pulled my knees up against my chest as I heard Draco come into the lounge.  
  
"Oh, it's you," he said to Ron. "I thought I heard voices."  
  
"I wasn't expecting you back," Ron managed to say casually.  
  
"Forgot my Vault Key," said Draco shortly. "I was going to call round and see Hermione but I thought I'd let her sweat a little bit longer. Got a problem with that?"  
  
"Don't want to hear it, mate," Ron bit out.  
  
"But I thought you'd understand," continued Draco smoothly. "It's such a turn on when she gets all upset and confused, she goes all clingy."  
  
I almost gasped out loud. I couldn't believe the way Draco was talking about me. Like I was a little doll that he pulled out of the toy box when he wanted something to play with. And what was the deal with him goading Ron by talking about me in that hateful way, flippant way? I knew they weren't really friends anymore (my fault again) but this was something else. Something else that I didn't really want to know about.  
  
"Well if she does owl or call," Draco was saying, "tell her I had to, hmmm, that something else came up but I can't wait to see her."  
  
Ron snarled something very rude and I heard Draco chuckle as he left the room. I waited a few more seconds until the front door slammed and Ron's head appeared over the back of the sofa.  
  
"It's alright, he's gone."  
  
I managed to squeeze out from behind the sofa and slipped the Invisibility Cloak off. My calf muscles were protesting from my awkward position behind the sofa.  
  
"I've got cramp," I moaned at Ron, collapsing in an armchair. Ron knelt down in front of me as I rubbed the back of my leg.  
  
"So what was all that. what the hell are you doing?" I yelled as Ron put one of my feet in his lap and started to gently stroke the muscles below my knee.  
  
"Shush," Ron said firmly. "I'm just making you feel better."  
  
The touch of his hands kneading out the knots was pure bliss. And when the knots had gone, Ron carried on stroking my leg. All of a sudden I couldn't breathe. I looked Ron with confused eyes and he stared right back at me, almost daring me to make him stop, before bending his head to kiss my knee. I knew that all I had to do was reach forward slightly and Ron and I would be on the floor, with out mouths locked together. And by the glint in his eye I could tell that he knew it too. For a moment I did nothing and then I was reaching forward but it was only to push him away so I could stand up.  
  
"I'm out of here," I said decisively "We really shouldn't be alone together."  
  
Ron gave a groan and fell back on the floor. "I can't even look at you without wanting to do things that I shouldn't."  
  
I couldn't help myself. "What kind of things?"  
  
Ron gave another groan. "Things that would make you blush if I told you about them." 


	4. The Barbeque

Chapter 4 Saturday 29 July  
  
Of course now I actually had to go ahead and have the sodding barbecue. At least it was going to be girls/witches only. I couldn't cope with any more boy/wizard-induced tension.  
  
I s'pose the one good thing about last Sunday was that Cho and I had found friendship again. She'd owled me the next day to tell me that Harry was doing all the kind of things that a proper boyfriend should. And she even apologised for all the mean things she'd said.  
  
"It must be my hormones," she said sarcastically when she came round the next Saturday to help me make salad and dust off the sun loungers.  
  
"I think it's a little too soon to start using that excuse," I told her. "Have you decided what to do yet?"  
  
"Well I took the pregnancy test, but it was hard to tell whether it was positive or not. There's meant to be blue sparks in the window thing, but it was really faint," said Cho. "All I know is that I'm not ready to have a baby. I mean, I can barely look after myself!"  
  
"Sex always ends up getting complicated," I said feelingly.  
  
Cho looked at me with surprise. "Have you? With Draco? Oh God, it wasn't Ron, was it?  
  
"I haven't with anybody," I said indignantly. "But I'm thinking about it."  
  
Draco had come round the night before and had spent two hours alternating between kissing the stuffing out of me and getting really annoyed when I wouldn't let him go below the waist.  
  
I grimaced at the memory of it and Cho tactfully changed the subject. "So who's coming to this barbecue?"  
  
"Parvati, Lavender and Susan who I'm in the band with." I started.  
  
"I met them before," Cho reminded me. "And can we expect a performance?"  
  
"Susan reckons we're going to do an acoustic set but we'll see about that," I murmured darkly. "If Susan's coming then her little sister Penny will come too, but she never says anything to anyone. And I invited Ginny and you invited Veronique for me, didn't you?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm not sure if she's going to turn up though," Cho said hesitantly. "She really doesn't like you."  
  
"The feelings mutual." But at least the invitation (accepted or otherwise) might up my popularity quota with her cousin, I added to myself.  
  
I'd got way too much food in. Anna had let me clear out the cooler block at work and everyone had chipped in one galleon and five sickles. The kitchen was groaning with quiches, salads, and chips, cocktail sausages that I'm usually addicted to. But it was so hot, I didn't feel like eating.  
  
I was just trying to fix the actual barbecue together when Susan, Parvati, Lavender and Penny turned up. I waved a hand at them and went back to reading the instructions using the self-lighting charcoal. It might have just as well have been written in Urdu for all the sense it made. The doorbell rang and I could see the others were preoccupied with making dramatic in-roads into my ice-supply so I hurried to answer it. Veronique was standing on the doorstep looking about as happy to me as I was to see her.  
  
"Hi," she said distantly and tossed a stray lock of her dazzling blonde hair over her shoulder. I wondered idly if she'd used magic to make her hair shine so much. Why she would want to blind people was beyond my knowledge of understanding.  
  
"Glad you could make it," I said in my best hostess voice. The Mothership would have been so proud if she could have heard how polite and friendly I was being. "You must be hot, let me get you a drink."  
  
Veronique stepped past me and gave me a look as if to say, what are you on? "Where's Cho?" she asked rudely. I pointed in the direction of the garden. "She's out there, I think."  
  
"You've got some gooey stuff on your dress," Veronique pointed out with a smirk as she sauntered past.  
  
I looked down to see a glob of coleslaw on my new summer dress and with a sigh I ran up the stairs to get changed. I was deciding what to wear (as all my other summer robes were being cleaned) when the doorbell rang again. I quickly pulled on my genuine '60's pale-green flares and was hunting round for a top when the doorbell rang again.  
  
"Do I have to do everything?" I muttered between gritted teeth, practically falling down the stairs and trying to button up my shirt at the same time.  
  
I was still buttoning up when I opened the door. I mean, it was only going to be Ginny and she'd seen me in various states of undress whenever she slept over.  
  
But it wasn't Ginny. Harry, Ron, Draco and their mate Justin were standing there with a couple of lads who worked with the Weasley Twins at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, they happened to be Seamus and Dean. They were clutching some bags from which looked suspiciously like they came from the shops in Hogsmeade. They were all looking at my bare midriff. I pulled the gaping ends of my shirt together.  
  
"Do you need a hand with the buttons?" enquired Justin with a wolfish smile while I just stared at everyone.  
  
"You're not meant to be here," I complained as they began pushing past me.  
  
"Don't worry about it," sad Draco comfortingly, leaning down to kiss my cheek. "We're your official gatecrashers."  
  
"But I haven't got enough food," I wailed as I followed them down the hall into the kitchen.  
  
"Jeez, Hermione, you've got enough scoff to feed the population of house- elves," laughed Harry when he saw the buffet.  
  
"I've got some barbecue stuff too," I confessed. "Not that I can get it working, so I s'pose if you're staying you can use your ancient fire-making skills handed down since caveman days."  
  
We went out to the garden and Veronique immediately got up from her deck chair to curl herself around Ron who'd barely glanced at me since I opened the door. Cho seemed to know everyone and Susan knew Seamus and Dean because they used to hang out together back at Hogwarts, oh and the many times they came into the café almost everyday at lunchtimes. Parvati and Lavender were looking decidedly chipper at the presence of boy-shapes. So much for spending a quality time with the witchhood. Everyone was saying hello to each other, apart from Penny who, as usual, was fidgeting on the sidelines. I touched her arm. "D'you wanna help me get this barbecue working?" I asked gently. She nodded. The self-lighting charcoal wasn't working, so I whipped my wand out. Penny watched silently as I tried to light the charcoal and swore as I tried to get the stuff to ignite.  
  
"You could try chucking some lighter fuel on it," suggested Draco coming up behind me and placing a kiss on the back of my neck. He definitely improved when there was company present.  
  
"There will be no chucking and no lighter fuel," I said firmly as he took my wand out of my hands and lit the charcoal as soon as he muttered the words "Incendio." I clapped my hands slowly. "You've managed to lit it. And I couldn't even do it."  
  
Draco pointed towards the instructions, "It says in there if the charcoal won't self-light then you should point your wand vertically downwards when lighting it the emergency way."  
  
I smiled at him. "I'm impressed. You've obviously got hidden talents."  
  
Draco gave me a smouldering look. "You have no idea," he said softly.  
  
"We're not talking about barbecues anymore, are we?" I teased him.  
  
Penny scarpered off as Draco nudged me with his hip.  
  
"Nope," he murmured, pulling me towards him for another kiss.  
  
He always does this. He seems to know when I've had enough of him and he turns up being so affectionate that I melt into a pool of girlie slush.  
  
"So, do you want me to use my ancient fire-making skills to cook meat as well?" demanded Draco. "It might take my mind off the fact that you've still got four buttons undone on your shirt."  
  
Although my plans for a wizard/boy-free zone had been ruined, the barbecue was actually a success. Once Ginny had turned up and everyone had pretended to eat and given up because it was too hot, a game of witches versus wizards Quidditch had started. We summoned our broomsticks (everyone has one once they leave school) and we levitated some hoola hoops on each end of the garden.  
  
My garden was quite large so it worked out all right. And there were large trees and bushes covering the sight from Muggle eyes. (I was part of the Muggle Protection Act, but it seemed safe enough being quite hidden). I had a Quidditch set so we didn't have to charm any round objects.  
  
After I'd caught the Snitch leaving the score 200 to 60 we collapsed on the grass while Susan ordered Penny (who hadn't played) to make us some drinks. I found myself sitting next to Veronique. I thought she'd have been all snooty about doing something as uncool as playing six aside Quidditch but she'd been the witch of the match, scoring three of our goals.  
  
"You were really good," I told her. "I couldn't believe the way you looped around Seamus like that." She grinned at me. "I'm quite skilful when it comes to getting rid of the opposition."  
  
I didn't know how she could sit in my back garden, drinking chilled butterbeer and have the nerve to say something like that. She wasn't talking about Quidditch. Oh no. She was talking about me and Ron and doing it when no one else was around so she could keep her sweet girl rep. I tried to count to ten and not have a major hissy fit but I'd only got to five when I saw Susan bearing down on me with my acoustic guitar.  
  
"It's too hot," I told her before she could even open her mouth. "My fingers are way too sweaty to play."  
  
"I'm not taking no for an answer," Susan said, blithely ignoring my pained face. "Everyone's dying to hear us."  
  
"No they're not," I argued. But Cho, who was sitting nearby gave me an evil smile, and cooed, "Are you going to do that acoustic set that I've been looking forward to all day?"  
  
Susan hauled me to my feet, still protesting, and shoved the guitar at me. "You strum, I'll sing and Parvati and Lavender are going to improvise."  
  
Accompanied by Lavender on a tambourine (that she'd transfigured from some spoons and a wooden stick using her wand.) And with Parvati on harmonies, we did a couple of our own songs, which sounded weird, quite frankly, without the full-on shouty treatment, before launching into our version of Deaths Awful.  
  
When we'd finished I caught Ron's eye, he was staring at me with such longing that it made me catch my breath. Our eyes locked and it was only when Justin asked if we were going to take any requests and Susan dug me none too gently in the ribs that the moment passed. "I can't play many things," I insisted when Seamus and Dean pleaded with us to play Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals. "I can do some dad-rock stuff and that's about it."  
  
Any oldster stumbling into the back garden would have been delighted that young people could still make their own entertainment as we spent the next half hour singing aloud to Beatles' songs and forgetting the words to Wonderwall.  
  
By the time my strumming hand had started to cramp, it was getting dark. It was still sweltering hot, so I magically created a few fairy lights (real fairies fluttering around) to keep the midges away. Our garden had been transformed into a fairy grotto. I lay back on the grass contently and listened to the conversations wash over me. It was so nice when everybody forgot all the reasons why they hated each other and just chilled out. Even Draco and Ron seemed to be having a civil conversation about some new broomsticks out, wizards eh? I wasn't the only one inspired by all this group bonding as I heard Justin suddenly exclaim, "We should all go to a festival before the summer's over."  
  
I rolled my eyes. The day I went to a Muggle festival and slept in a tent without the benefit of my summer-weight duvet was the day they buried me. No one else seemed to share my opinion though. There were enthusiastic noises of agreement from all sides and I could have voiced my dissent, but knowing how flaky my guests were I reckoned that any mass outings were never going to happen. I smirked as Dean mentioned that his Muggle relatives had offered him some cheap tickets to a festival in Devon, but frowned slightly as Susan added that Anna would probably let us borrow the café's van (it would be too expensive to buy a Port Key to take us that far away, also with us many). This was starting to sound suspiciously like a plan. I was just about to point out all the pitfalls of sharing a field with a bunch of tree-hugging hippy Muggles when Parvati plonked herself down next to me.  
  
"D'you wanna know a secret?" she giggled.  
  
"Yeah!"  
  
"I think Justin's really cute," she whispered. "He's just asked me if I want to go to the Three Broomsticks with him tomorrow."  
  
"Cool," I said. "Justin's a sweetheart."  
  
"You should know," said Veronique from somewhere behind me. "Hermione's snogged him," she added for Parvati's benefit.  
  
I sat up and glared at her. "Who told you that?" Veronique held my gaze. "Draco told me. It wasn't a secret, was it?"  
  
I was going to kill Draco. Once in a moment of weakness I'd told him that I'd ended up snogging Justin when I first split up with Ron. And I only told him because we were having an intimate moment and it seemed like a good idea to be honest with each other. My mistake. I jumped to my feet as Cho came over to investigate the raised voices.  
  
"It was a one-off," I told Parvati who was looking at me with a hurt expression. "We'd both had too much to drink."  
  
But Veronique wasn't finished. "In fact, the only boy she hasn't made a play for seems to be Harry," she remarked to Cho conversationally.  
  
"Shut it, Veronique," hissed Cho as I tried to count to ten again. It was no use; I was going to whack her if I stayed in the garden. With a frustrated groan I took a step towards Veronique who was standing there with a satisfied smile on her face but Parvati grabbed my arm and dragged me into the kitchen. The strip light made my eyes hurt as Parvati pulled me towards the sink and told me to splash cold water on my face.  
  
"I snogged him once," I repeated. "'Cause I was upset and I was trying to make Ron jealous. It was a mistake. We don't even talk about it."  
  
Parvati held up a hand. "OK, just calm down," she said soothingly. "It kinda freaked me out for a minute that you'd snogged him but it's alright."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Look, I'm not that naïve," Parvati said with a smile. "I guess Justin's been with other girl's. I just didn't realise you were one of them."  
  
"I wasn't with him," I protested. "It was just a kiss."  
  
"I know," said Parvati. "Please don't start getting hysterical. Go upstairs and put on some more mascara, you've washed yours all off. And I'm going to go and ask Justin if you're a good snog. Joke!"  
  
"Oh, ha ha," I said sourly but I followed orders and walked upstairs. But I didn't re-apply my Maybelline Wonderlash. I sat on my bed with my head in my hands. Sometimes I just wanted to disappear and never come back. I must have said it out loud 'cause I head Ron's voice from the doorway saying, "I don't know what I'd do if you left."  
  
"You'd manage," I told him, looking up and in that split second that our eyes collided, it was as if I was back in his living room because the tension was there again and the only thing that was preventing us from kissing was our own willpower. Which seemed to be in very short supply.  
  
I held out my arms as Ron flew towards me and then we fell back on my bed, his body covering every inch of me, our lips searching and then finding. All my nerve endings were so over-sensitised that when Ron kissed my neck I whimpered because it felt so good even though I knew it was wrong. I tried to pull him back to me as he suddenly shifted away from me. But he was only tugging his t-shirt over his head and throwing it on the floor before settling back in my arms. He plated little kisses along the way as he undid each button on my shirt and our legs tangled with each other.  
  
The last fragment of my rational mind registered the irony of the situation. Like, Draco had been badgering me for weeks and all I could do was come up with excuses about it not being the right time or the right place and now I was with Ron and the door was wide open and anyone could burst in on us and I didn't care. All I cared about was the scrape of Ron's teeth on my tongue and the frantic drumming of his heart against my chest and the chaos his fingers were causing as he stroked my back.  
  
"Make me stop," Ron groaned, making no effort to pull away from me.  
  
"I don't want you to stop," I whispered and Ron caught my mouth again in a hard, frantic kiss. His hand curled into the waistband of my trousers and nothing was going to stop.  
  
"Hermione. Um, Hermione."  
  
There it was again. That nagging voice that must be my conscience.  
  
"Hermione!"  
  
Ron paused. "Did you hear something?" Was my conscience that loud?  
  
I tried to get into the kissing and the moments towards losing my virginity again but the moment was gone. Especially when I glimpsed Penny standing at the doorway looking like she was about to burst into tears and bleating, "Hermione! Hermione!" at me. In one movement I pushed Ron away and jack-knifed off the bed.  
  
"How long have you been there?" I yelled at her, once again grabbing the ends of my shirt and folding my arms.  
  
"I was calling you but you, er, didn't hear me," she whispered in the tiniest voice I'd ever heard.  
  
"I'm sorry I shouted at you," I said, trying to catch my breath. All I could think was, my God, she actually spoke. Ron, with t-shirt back on stepped in front of me to shield me from her curious gaze. Penny's eyes were popping out as she looked at him and then me and then back to Ron again.  
  
"You never saw this," he said to her sharply. "Hermione and I, we're just. we just got carried away." He could say that again.  
  
"People are going now," Penny said. "They wondered where you were." She gave us another incredulous look and scampered out.  
  
"You'd better go downstairs," I said, moving away from him. "Say I was being sick or something. The heat."  
  
"Is damage limitation all you can think about?" Ron snarled. "Don't you think we should talk about what just happened?"  
  
"It was stupid what just happened!" I said fiercely. But it hadn't been stupid. It had been glorious and wonderful and thrilling and must never happen again. I walked out of the room without looking back.  
  
It was obvious that everyone was wondering where Ron and I had disappeared to but I cobbled together silly stories about the heat and eating too many cocktail sausages and being sick and when Ron appeared he and Veronique left immediately. The others followed. Cho and Harry stayed behind to help me clear up and finally they went too but Cho was back to being weird with me.  
  
I went out into the garden and sank down on the sun lounger. I felt lousy. I was a bad, bad witch. I wasn't to be trusted, especially with other witch's boyfriends. But Ron was more than someone else's boyfriend. No matter how hard we tried to be apart from each other, some force that I couldn't even begin to explain drew us together.  
  
"It went rather well, don't you think?"  
  
I gave a start as Draco came towards me.  
  
"I thought everyone had gone home," I muttered.  
  
"No, I'm still here," he said softly. "I made you a cup of tea."  
  
I moved my legs so he could sit on the side of the lounger and took the mug from him. It was dark but I could see the searching look he gave me. And I somehow knew that he knew what Ron and I had been doing, I just did. And Draco might have been difficult and high maintenance but he didn't deserve the treatment he was getting from me.  
  
"What are you thinking?" he asked.  
  
My mouth twisted. "I was wondering why you put up with me."  
  
Draco reached out to stroke my hair from my face. "Maybe I think you're worth the effort."  
  
It was all very well breaking my heart over Ron but it was always going to be doomed to failure. Whereas Draco was right here, right now. He wasn't going anywhere, he was staying with me, and despite all the grief I gave him.  
  
"Draco?"  
  
"What's the matter, honey?" he purred, nestling me into his arms.  
  
"I've been thinking." I took a deep breath. "I will sleep with you. Not tonight but very soon, I promise." 


	5. Susan's Confession

Chapter 5 Thursday 17 August  
  
I read this interview in the Daily Prophet with Mildred Trimble and she said if you wanted something badly enough the whole world would conspire to make sure you got it. Much! I wanted to go to this pikey festival about as much as I wanted to be locked in a room with Veronique, but at every turn I was thwarted. I didn't want to sleep in a field or have communal showers or be forced to eat veggie burgers injected with lethal doses of salmonella. But every time I said anything about not wanting to go, the girls would accuse me of being a princess. And not in a good way either.  
  
Even Draco, a wizard famed for the sharpness of his robes and the volume of his quiff seemed uncharacteristically up for roughing it.  
  
At least, I thought, Anna wouldn't give me, Susan and Ron the weekend off but she'd decided to close the café for the bank holiday and was even letting us borrow her van. The same van whose back doors fly open if you take a corner too fast.  
  
My last hopes was the 'rents when they made their weekly phone call to make sure I hadn't killed the cat, the plants or myself.  
  
But before I spoke to my 'rents there was something way more important I had to do, and for once it didn't involve boys. It involved (cue dramatic music) going to Hogwarts to get my NEWT results. If I'd been left to myself I'd have been quite happy to wait for them to arrive in the post, but Mum had given Anna strict instructions. When I got to work that fateful Wednesday morning she was standing at the door with the Floo powder in her hand.  
  
"Hey Anna," I said brightly. "Shall I put the kettle on?"  
  
"Nice try, kiddo," was Anna's reply. "In the fireplace now, I'm taking you to get your results."  
  
I whimpered something about planning to go in my break but Anna took my arm in a freakishly strong grip for such a little witch and practically shoved me into the fire. We didn't say very much as we took a horseless carriage from Hogsmeade (we came through the Three Broomsticks.) Anna asked me once if I was nervous and I lied and said I wasn't but when we went over a rough area I thought I was going to puke.  
  
Anna took her loco parentis role far too seriously for my liking. She frogmarched me into Hogwarts, obviously expecting me to bolt, and hauled me over to the notice-board where the results were pinned up. I stood and gazed at a spot just above where I should have been looking.  
  
"Do you want me to.?"  
  
I shook my head. "No, I'll do it."  
  
I tried to look at the board and everything went blurry. I traced my finger down the list until I came to the Gs and found, "Granger, Hermione". I shut my eyes. This was my last moment of blissful ignorance. After this, I was either going to go to Fortescues Ice-cream parlour and fill in an application form or actually commit to getting a top job in the Ministry of Magic.  
  
I heard Anna make an impatient clucking sound behind me and I opened my eyes and forced myself to look.  
  
"A for History of Magic, A for Charms, A for Astronomy, A for Herbology, A for Potions, A for Defence Against the Dark Arts, A for Care of Magical Creatures, A for Study of Ancient Runes and another A for Transfiguration. I've got nine NEWTs." I managed to say. You will not cry. You will not cry, I told myself sternly.  
  
I'd been so good at pretending not to be worried about my results. I'd assumed an air of nonchalance for weeks while secretly angsting about them and I felt relieved but also really sad too. Like, now I was set on the path of being a grown-up and having to make big decisions that were going to change my life forever. No wonder I was nearly crying. But Anna was hugging me and then Parvati and Lavender were there, and Parvati had straight A'ed everything and Lavender hadn't done as bad as she thought. We were just about to get our getaway when I saw the Deputy Head, Professor Snape (who taught Potions) bearing down on me. He must have spent the last two years thinking I was a complete know-it-all and he didn't seem surprised at my results. I just turned to Anna and said, "Can we go now?" Well, I guess all that book learning paid off.  
  
I spoke to Mum and Dad once we got back to the café by taking the back door into the London street to use a pay phone. (My parents stayed all night waiting for me to call) And if I'd asked them for a pet Hippogriff they'd have agreed to build a jumbo kennel in the back garden. By the time Mum had finished cooing and Dad had got on the phone to say, "Oh yes, quite good Hermione, really", which is what he comes out with when he's pleased with me, there wasn't much time to say anything else. What I really wanted to say was that I was scared and confused and wished they'd come home and did they think it was a good idea to have sex with Draco? But Mum insisted that I went to the festival as long as the neighbours agreed to feed the cat, and then badgered me for five minutes about what I was planning to do the following year. Strangely my options didn't seem to include moping around the house watching daytime television, which was all I really wanted to do. After I got off the phone, Anna made me close my eyes and when I opened them Italian Tony and Winky were holding a cake in the shape of a guitar which said, "Congratulations!" in sparkly gold lettering and underneath that in scarlet sparkly icing was added, "We knew you could do it."  
  
Then they all starting singing For She's A Jolly Good Witch and all the customers joined in. It was too hideous for words. But I couldn't be an ungrateful cow so I smiled until my jaw muscles ached and acted like I was really pleased. Don't get me wrong, I was touched that Anna, Winky and Tony had gone to so much trouble but I just wished everyone would just up about my flamin' results.  
  
Ron had called in sick, for which I was eternally grateful. We'd had an unspoken pact since my barbeque to ignore each other, but when Susan came in at lunchtime she started avoiding me too. Every time I caught her eyes as we waited tables, she looked away. I didn't know what was going on. The minute Anna turned the sign with her wand to "Closed" Susan was out the door. I gave Anna a big hug for being an ace surrogate mum and raced after Susan.  
  
"Susan! Su! Wait up!" I called after her but she carried on walking. I finally caught up with her at the end of Diagon Alley.  
  
"Didn't you hear me calling?"  
  
She gave me a nervous look. "No."  
  
"What's up?" I demanded, turning her to face me. "You've been strange with me all day. Have I done something wrong to annoy you?"  
  
Susan ran a hand through her messy ginger curls. "I've been trying to plan out what I was going to say to you but everything I rehearsed sounded wrong," she began.  
  
"What are you talking about?" I asked in a confused voice.  
  
Susan took my hand; led me over to an outside table outside the ice-cream parlour. We sat down and Susan sighed deeply. "Draco made a pass at me at your barbecue."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You'd disappeared and I was talking to him about bands we liked and then some insect thingy landed on my shoulder and bit me. And he -Draco, I mean -he pulled me forward to see the sting and then he kissed my shoulder and before I knew what he was doing, he'd kissed me properly, on the mouth."  
  
"Are you sure?" But I already knew the answer.  
  
"Yeah, Hermione, I'm sure," said Susan sadly. "I told him to cut it out and he just laughed and said that I'd been flirting with him. But I hadn't. I just like him, that was all. He was someone to talk about music with." I tried to smile as if the whole thing was a silly misunderstanding. "He'd probably had too much to drink." Susan shook her head. "He hadn't. And he said. no, it doesn't matter."  
  
"Tell me!"  
  
"He said he was fed up with you playing games," Susan continued unhappily. "And that he'd fancied me for ages and you were just seeing him to make Ron jealous." I could feel the sun beating down on my back through my thin blue robes as I sat there and listened to Susan's confession. And as I looked at the tears trickling down Susan's face I knew she wasn't lying. I might be able to snog someone else's boyfriend but Susan was a straight-edge. She'd never break the girl code. That didn't mean I wanted to believe her though.  
  
"Are you sure?" I asked her.  
  
"I'm positive," she said firmly. "I didn't want to tell you but Parvati and Lavender said you'd want to know."  
  
"Christ Susan," I exclaimed angrily. "How many other people have you told?" I hated myself for that little outburst. Draco was the one I should be mad at, not Susan.  
  
"Just them and erm, Cho," came the worried reply. "I had to tell someone and Draco stomped off once I'd yelled at him and they could tell I was upset about something."  
  
"No wonder everyone was being weird when I got downstairs," I said. And I could have told her what I'd really been doing while Draco had been lunging but for some reason I didn't. Call it self-preservation.  
  
"Are you and me alright?" Susan asked.  
  
"Oh, come here," I told her and gave her a hug and made her promise not to worry about it anymore.  
  
I floo home and tried to work out how I felt about Susan's revelation. I was sorry that she was upset but I didn't feel any blinding white jealously I felt when I thought of Veronique and Ron together. Maybe it was because Susan was my mate. And maybe it was because I knew that Draco must have been drunk. He'd been so patient with me, stuck by me while I'd tried to make up my mind. Draco was stupid. He must have known that Susan would tell me. Which made me think that he must have been drunk. I mean, why else would he have done it? But drunk or not, I was still going to give him ten shades of hell when I next saw him.  
  
It had been such a tempestuous day. I must have gone through every emotion invented. The last straw was the next-door neighbours agreeing to look after Crookshanks while I spent quality time in a field with the kind of muggles I normally crossed over the road to avoid. I couldn't understand why Fate was being such a meanie. The neighbours usually wrote Mum angry letters about Crookshanks because she kept having it with tomcats while they were trying to sleep. God, even my cat was doing it!  
  
When I finally got indoors, I felt so restless -I didn't know what to do with myself. It was beyond hot now and I was so confused about every single last bit of my stupid little life. I threw my clothes off, pulled on my new boy-cut bikini bottoms and bandeau top, and went into the garage to look for my old paddling pool. With the 'rents away our household was using hardly any water so I felt I could safely sneer in the face of the hose- pipe ban.  
  
Finally I was at peace, sitting in five inches of cold water with a tub of Floretescue's Cookie Dough ice cream. The summer wasn't going to get much better than this. Or worse, I thought as I saw Draco climbing over the gate that led back to the street. There was plenty I had to say to him but I hadn't planned to say it while I was half-naked in a kiddies' paddling pool. But I also didn't fancy trying to scramble out and fall over, which was what usually happened when I tried to get out of said pool.  
  
"I tried ringing the doorbell but there was no reply," Draco said sauntering towards me. "You look.," he paused for effect, "enchanting."  
  
I tugged my top more securely into place and folded my arms as Draco squatted down next to me.  
  
"So did you get your results?" he asked after a minute had gone by and I hadn't said anything.  
  
"Yup," I said shortly.  
  
"And they were good, bad, indifferent?" he prompted.  
  
"They were fine," I hissed.  
  
Draco took of his shades and gave me an annoyed look, narrowing his dark blue eyes and curling the top lip of his beautifully sculptured mouth. He looked like he'd been carved out of marble. "What's up with you?"  
  
"What's up with me?" I couldn't believe his nerve. "I had a chat with Susan today," I spat out. "She told me that you, you, that you tried to snog her at my party!"  
  
Draco froze for a second before going completely ballistic. He called me a selfish mudblood who'd spend the last few months putting him through hell. He said that Susan had been drunk and made a pass at him. And he said that I'd strung him along for ages and he'd just taken it like a fool. And finally he accused me of using Susan's story as an excuse not to have sex with him. And I had to sit there in the God Forsaken paddling pool and listen while Draco shouted at me and hurled a couple of deck chairs down the length of the garden in his fury.  
  
"Ok, I'm just going to walk out of here now," he said once he'd managed to lower his volume control. "And I'll be out of your life for good. It'll save you having to come up with sad stories like this. I love you but obviously that's not enough for you."  
  
And he turned to go and I realised that he must have been telling the truth. Why else would he have got so mad and been so hurt? Or offered to leave when he'd spent months hanging around waiting for me to get over Ron?  
  
And although I didn't think Susan had lied, maybe Draco was right and she'd been the one who was drunk and couldn't remember what had happened. Besides, he loved me! He was the first non-family person in the world to ever say that they loved me. Um, apart from, well, you know.  
  
"Draco, don't go," I pleaded, standing up. "I'm sorry." Draco carried on walking.  
  
"Please come back," I begged, starting to cry. "I've said I'm sorry."  
  
He turned around slowly, looking shamefaced. "Oh, don't cry," he said huskily, walking back to me and pulling me into his arms. It felt so good to be held by someone. I wound my arms around his waist and clung on for dear life while I sobbed all over his shirt.  
  
Draco made soothing noises and stroked by hair. "There, there, baby," He purred. "I'm not going anywhere."  
  
"I'm sorry," I repeated. "I had to believe Susan."  
  
"I know you did, sweetheart," Draco said soothingly. "But do you really think I'd have hung around this long if I'd been lusting after another girl?"  
  
"I guess not," I choked out.  
  
And then Draco suddenly swung me up in his arms, climbed into the paddling pool and settled me on his lap.  
  
"You're mad," I said laughing even though I was still crying a bit. "All your clothes are wet."  
  
Draco shrugged. "They'll dry."  
  
Our faces were so close I could see the tiny scar that bisected his eyebrow. I stroked it with the tip of one finger.  
  
I was sitting in my flowery pink bikini on the lap of a fully-clad wizard in a child's paddling pool and it felt normal. And really, really nice.  
  
I pulled Draco's head towards me and kissed the corner of his mouth gently. He smiled at me.  
  
"Aren't you going to kiss me properly?" he said. "You've never had any trouble before."  
  
I kissed him again and his lips parted to let me snake my tongue into his mouth. I like being the kisser and not the kissee for once. I kissed Draco harder and tugged at him so were both lying in the water with our entwined legs handing over the edge.  
  
I started unbuttoning his shirt and Draco's hands which had been idly caressing my back stilled.  
  
"Don't you want to?" I whispered. "I was going to make it up to you."  
  
"That sounds interesting," Draco drawled. "How were you going to do that?"  
  
"I thought we could, y'know.," I ran my fingers down his chest in what I hoped was a suggestive manner. " Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Draco asked a hint of a smile playing at his lips.  
  
"I think I'm ready," I said decisively. "Let's do it." Draco held my face in his hands and gave me a long, deep kiss before getting to his feet and reaching a hand to me. I let him pull me up.  
  
He placed his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. "I'm going to pass this time, Hermione." I tried to twist away from him but he held me tight. "Oh thanks for letting me make a complete idiot of my myself," I said bitterly. "I though it was what you wanted."  
  
Draco tucked my hair back behind my ears and gave me a gooey look.  
  
"It is," he insisted. "And I'm incredibly tempted but I want you to have sex with me when it's right for you. Not because we've had a row and you want to make it up to me. Trust me, I know what I'm saying."  
  
"I feel stupid," I muttered, still standing in front of him.  
  
"Well you shouldn't," he said firmly. "It was generous and lovely of you and you'll never know how much I wanted to take you upstairs and ravish you to within an inch of your life."  
  
"Yeah, right." But I was smiling now. It might have taken some time but what I was feeling towards Draco now was definitely a love thing.  
  
"Are you going to stick around?" I asked him as we walked into the house hand in hand.  
  
"You bet," he answered giving me another marshmallow look and I knew he was talking about the months ahead and not just the next few hours. "Why don't you put some clothes on before I change my mind and then we'll.what do you want to do?"  
  
"Eat some food, exploding snap, snog a bit," I decided. "You interested?"  
  
And then I ran upstairs and jumped up and down on my bed because I was so happy I thought my heart would burst into millions of sparkly pieces. 


	6. Trance Tapes and Sheep Throwing

Chapter 6 Thursday 24 August  
  
A week had gone by and I was sitting on Draco's lap in the back of a van on our way to a muggle festival. I was only happy about one of these facts.  
  
The last week had been so blissful on the Draco front. It was as if we decided to put all the bad stuff behind us and start our relationship again. No more lies, no more playing games with each other, no more listening to other people telling us that we were bad for each other. Which they did.  
  
I'd had a really horrible evening at rehearsal when I'd had to tell Susan that I was still with Draco. She'd looked at me as if I'd just spewed green ectoplasm out of my stomach.  
  
"But how can you, Hermione?" she'd kept asking me. "After what happened at the barbecue."  
  
"We cleared all that up," I'd said. "And even if it was true, I don't care 'cause it's brought us closer together."  
  
"What do you mean if it was true?" Lavender had chimed in. "Do you think Susan would lie about something like that?"  
  
Then the pair of them and Parvati had spent the rest of the rehearsal muttering about toxic wizards and witches who were too dumb to see through them. I think they were trying to tell me something, but, quite frankly, I didn't want to hear it.  
  
Ron had spent the week trying to corner me when we were alone in the kitchen to tell me that we had to talk but I couldn't be bothered to go through a painful post-mortem on our hopeless attempts to be friends. It always ended up with us snogging. I didn't need to find comfort in Ron's arms anymore and I hope that didn't sound heartless.  
  
I mean, it wasn't fair on Ron or on Draco. And now that I'd made the decision to be with Draco, properly, I felt more relaxed than I'd been in ages. I hadn't actually told Draco about what happened between me and Ron at the barbecue, there didn't seem to be much point. Not when things were going so well. What he didn't know, he couldn't get huffy about.  
  
The only other blots on my otherwise blemish-free landscape were the thought of going to the pigging festival and Cho who was still pregnant, still not sure what to do about it and taking her frustrations out on me.  
  
"Could you be any more in denial?" she'd said contemptuous when she'd heard that Draco and I had been seen engaged in a passionate kiss in the Odeon foyer. "He's bad news, Hermione. How can you not see it?"  
  
"That was before," I'd insisted. "I think he comes out with those sarky comments because really he'd shy."  
  
Cho had just snorted and pointed out that if any other girl had tried that kind of remark in my hearing I'd have had her for breakfast.  
  
All these negative thoughts made me more determined not to go to the festival. By now I just wanted to be shot of my virginity and I thought Draco and I should stay in Derby and er, consummate our relationship away from the disapproving comments of our so-called friends. But Draco had got this romantic notion that my first time should be underneath the stars amid lots of grass and probably some slug-type creepy crawlies as well. And so here I was on my way to a festival with a bunch of condoms in my bag and at least six pairs of eyes looking daggers at me. Susan had insisted that she wasn't going to sit in the back of the van with a pointed look at me and Draco, and was sitting in front with Cho and Harry who was driving the car. Oh, and Penny, who seemed to be more surgically welded to her sister's side than ever before, and managed to squeeze onto the seat as well, (but they used an enlargement charm on the seat just so they could breathe).  
  
In the back, Parvati was declining Justin's attempts to persuade her to sit on his lap so she wouldn't keep banging herself on bags and tent frames every time Harry changed lanes. Lavender was happily ensconced between Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan, while Ron and Veronique were sitting away from everybody else (well as far away as you can get in the back of a dilapididated Transit van) looking like they'd just had the mother of all arguments. Well, actually, they had just had the mother of all arguments.  
  
They'd been the last to arrive. Ron's battered little Mini had roared outside the back of the café (being in the London muggle street) as we were packing our gear into the van. He'd uncurled himself from the driver's seat and stood there tapping his feet impatiently while Veronique scrambled over to his side of the car to get out. (It had been two months and he still hadn't got his passenger door fixed. Obviously his father wanted his son to now fix cars the muggle way ever since Ron's mother had found out that her husband was using magic on the family car.)  
  
"Thanks for helping me," she'd snarled at him. "Get my stuff out of your stinking car."  
  
I'd looked at Draco, but he hadn't seemed bothered by the ferocity of the argument and had carried on hauling bags into the van.  
  
"Get it yourself," Ron was saying between gritted teeth, but he'd got her gear out of the boot anyway. As he'd gathered the bags in one hand so he could slam the boot with the other, he'd dropped a small vanity case which had burst open, spilling all Veronique's pots and potions and make-up into the road.  
  
If I'd thought Draco had gone ballistic in the garden the other day, it was nothing on Veronique's reaction when she saw her Clinique compact get run over. She'd been like a magical creature possessed, flying at Ron, slapping him and screaming obscenities at the top of her voice. And it was such a good thing for Ron that Veronique's wand was in her bags still as she would have done some serous damage in the state in which she was looking. That was freaky in the extreme, but what was even freakier was the other people's reactions. Me and Susan, Penny, Parvati, Lavender, Dean and Seamus had all looked horrified, but Cho and Harry had just rolled their eyes while Justin had muttered, "Here we go again," under his breath.  
  
Ron had been trying to hold Veronique off without actually hurting her and kept on telling her to calm down, but she'd just got more and more worked up.  
  
"You make me sick. I hate you," she screeched. Ron had eventually managed to push her away and hold her at arm's length.  
  
"I don't need this," he'd hissed. "Just stop it." Veronique went still for a moment and he'd finally let go of her and started to head towards the rest of us. But Veronique had gone for him again. "Don't you dare walk away from me!" she'd shouted, her raised wand in her hand, but Draco had managed to grab her in time.  
  
"Come on, Ronnie," he'd said in that voice he used with me when I was being completely unreasonable. "Let's go for a walk." They'd disappeared down the street and Ron had let out a deep breath, his shoulders drooping.  
  
"She's been a complete 'mare ever since she got up," he'd muttered at Cho who had rushed over to see if he was alright. The rest of us had just stood there gawping. The sight of Ron, surrounded by his friends, who were all trying to console him, looking utterly alone had really got to me. When I thought about it, he was the one that didn't smile anymore. Not properly. Not with that smirk and raised eyebrow that used to make me come over all- unnecessary. But I'd told myself it was useless to think of Ron as anything other than as acquaintance, I was with Draco now. And eventually the sight of Ron wouldn't affect me anymore. I just had to wean myself off him.  
  
The atmosphere in the van hadn't got any better. We'd argued which music we were going to play, which service station to stop at and who got to sit next to the open window and we'd only been on the road for an hour.  
  
"We could play 'I went to the festival'." I suggested brightly only to have my idea shot down with varying degrees of savagery. Ron had given me a filthy look and I knew he was remembering the time we'd gone to Paris and spent practically the whole journey saying stuff, like, "I went to the festival and I took article's of clothing belonging to Paul Daniels, brine shrimp." Those had been happier days.  
  
Draco wrapped his arms tightly around my waist. "Well, I thought it was a good idea," he whispered in my ear. "I can't wait to get you alone in a tent."  
  
And although I kissed his cheek and smiled at him, I wondered why the thought of losing my virginity with a boy I was really into made me feel like I was going to go into hospital for open-heart surgery.  
  
Ron had been watching me and Draco with narrowed eyes when all of a sudden he turned to the still-fuming Veronique and stroked her cheek lightly.  
  
"I'm sorry, Ronnie," I could hear him say. "It was my fault. I should have remembered to set the alarm clock." Veronique gave him a look that would have turned weaker wizards to stone and shifted half an inch away from him.  
  
"Oh, come on," Ron continued softly. "I'll do anything to make it up to you."  
  
Veronique began to look interested. "Anything?" she enquired with that cat- like smile I hated so much.  
  
"Anything you want," Ron promised.  
  
"Hmmm, I want that new pair of shoes we saw in Office," Veronique decided. "The cow-skin ones with the pink trim."  
  
"I'll buy them as soon as we get back," Ron was saying and Veronique gave a little cry of happiness and flung herself at him. I thought her whole performance smacked of overkill and since when did Ron get so sappy?  
  
Whenever he'd been on the business end of one of my hissy fits, he'd just smirked and teased me out of it. I could have doubled the contents of my wardrobe if I had known.  
  
As Veronique was planting little kisses over every bit of Ron that she could reach, he caught my eye and then deliberately captured Veronique's mouth in a long, passionate kiss which caused Seamus to say loudly, "Hey you two, go book a room." They came up for air and Ron gave me a nasty smile. I turned my head away but not before I'd seen Veronique throw a satisfied glance at Draco who continued to squeeze me tightly. The back of this van was swiftly turning into my own private version of hell.  
  
After we'd been travelling for three hours and I was thinking if I had to listen to Dean's copy of The Best Trance Album in The World.Ever one more time I was going to rip my ears off, Harry stopped the van.  
  
As he opened the big, sliding door and let us out I could see we weren't in a service station car-park about to pig-out on fast food. We'd stopped in a small village complete with cricket pitch and duck pond and coach loads of American tourists who were looking at us as if we'd just landed from Mars.  
  
"Where's the nearest KFC?" Dean asked, but Harry and Cho just smiled mysteriously.  
  
"There's a little tea shop on the other side of the duck pond," Cho said. "But first we thought we'd take in the sheep throwing contest."  
  
"I think I speak for all when I say, 'Huh?'" I muttered under my breath as I felt a Buffy moment coming on.  
  
"Yeah, we saw a sign," Harry was saying. "Sheep throwing! Had to check it out."  
  
What happened next was the freakiest thing yet. Penny stamped on Harry's foot, yelled something about cruelty to animals and stormed off in the direction of a nearby paddock (that's what you call it, right?) where there was bunting and crowds and other things that suggested that sheep were being thrown.  
  
Susan ran after Penny, and Parvati and Lavender ran after Susan and I lay down on the ground and laughed and laughed. Every time I tried to stop I thought of Harry's look of utter shock when Penny had attacked him and started to laugh again. Draco gave me an amused glance and told me to get up but by then I was doubled over with tears streaming down my face.  
  
"Harry's face." I kept trying to say while Harry flushed and grumbled that it wasn't that funny.  
  
"Actually it was, honey," insisted Cho. "We thought we were being dead smart getting everybody to go to the yodel entertainment but I guess Penny called our bluff."  
  
"Ron!" barked Veronique, sounding less than impressed. "I'm getting a hunger headache, can we find something to eat in this godforsaken hole?" And she flounced off in the direction of Ye Olde Tea Shoppe.  
  
"Anything you say. Sweetness," Ron bit out ironically, earning him a sharp glance from Draco, before he followed Veronique.  
  
"C'mon Herm," said Cho pulling me to my feet. It had been a while since Cho had called me Herm, and even though Draco was making "let's slope off!" motions at me, I linked arms with Cho and went off to investigate the sheep throwing.  
  
Penny had staged a one-woman protest by the time we got there and was being recorded for posterity on the tourists' camcorders.  
  
"You're cruel!" she was shouting at some hapless farmer who had a distressed sheep on the end of a leash.  
  
"Penny, you're upsetting the animals," Susan said, trying to calm her down. "They're not actually throwing the sheep. Are you?" she added anxiously at a tweedy-looking muggle who seemed to be in charge.  
  
"My dear, it's more of a sheep jumping event. There are no sheep being thrown," he insisted. "It's all under the supervision of the local vet. We've been holding this tournament for over 300 years and I've never."  
  
"See Penny, nothing to get excited about," I said soothingly. "Sheep like jumping. Haven't you seen One Man And His Dog?"  
  
Penny looked at me questioningly. "Do you really think so?"  
  
"Yes," I said, managing to keep a straight face. "Can we go and get something to eat now before I start chomping on Little Woolly Lamb here."  
  
"Oh, OK," Penny conceded, taking the hand I held out towards her. "But if I find out you've been throwing sheep I'm reporting you to the Misuse of Animals department at the Ministry of M-"  
  
"Er-she means RSPCA." I cut in quickly assuring the confused expression of Mr Tweed. Then I quickly dragged Penny away.  
  
Once we'd tried to fill up on cucumber sarnies from Ye Olde Tea Shoppe and watched to make sure that the sheep weren't being thrown, it was time to get back in the van, which had heated up, to furnace-like temperatures. It wasn't too long before tempers were fraying again. Veronique and Ron had had another row while we'd been doing the sheep thing so they were snarling at each other, Cho kept sniping Dean who'd produced some egg 'n' mayo sandwiches from his backpack 'cause the smell was making her feel sick, and Parvati and Lavender had a blazing domestic about which members of wizard- bands were gay or not.  
  
I was fed up with the whole blimmin' lot of them. Draco had been all grumpy ever since I'd gone off with Cho and I was seriously contemplating jumping out at the next pit stop and hitching home or possible the night bus (opps no wizard money). Instead I dug out a book I'd taken a fancy to reading and tried to tune out the heat and aggression building up in the van.  
  
When we finally got back on the motorway, the van gave a dramatic splutter and got slower and slower before stopping. Luckily Harry had managed to steer it onto the hard shoulder before it died altogether but we had to wait four hours in the burning afternoon sun as Harry with the help of Ron and Draco tried to fix the problem using their wands (but as they weren't engineers or anything it took a while).  
  
The only highlight of the wait was when Justin flagged down a passing ice cream van and persuaded the driver to sell us some cold drinks.  
  
It was six in the evening before we got started again and when we reached the festival site four hours later no one was talking, mainly because they'd fallen asleep. We got stuck in this traffic jam leading up to the main entrance and the stewards told us it would take over an hour to even get on the site.  
  
I knew I couldn't stay in the van one minute longer. To tell you the truth I was still thinking about doing a runner and hitching a lift to the nearest train station but even I could tell that was a baaaaaaaaaad idea. I grabbed my backpack and my shoulder bag and crawled over to the door.  
  
"I'm getting out," I announced. "I'll meet you at the campsite. I'm going to walk."  
  
People began to stir. "But Hermione, you hate walking," Lavender pointed out.  
  
"And you'll get lost," stated Draco with absolute certainty.  
  
"No I won't," I said crossly. "We've already decided where we're going to pitch the tents. I've got a map and if I have to spend one more second in this van I'm going to kill someone. Probably Dean."  
  
"What have I done?" asked Dean indignantly.  
  
"It's not you. It's you trance tapes," I said savagely.  
  
"I never thought I'd say this," piped up Veronique, "but I have to agree with her on that one."  
  
My bolt for freedom didn't exactly go to plan. After ten more minutes of pointless arguing, we left Harry and Cho with the van and started walking towards the site. We walked and walked and walked until my feet were slipping around sweatily in my trainers. And Lord knows when I'd next get to have a bath. Not anytime soon that was for sure.  
  
It was pitch dark by this time, lit only by the odd campfire and we kept tripping over people until we reached where we were going to set up camp. Or we thought it was the right place. It was hard to tell. Of course, all the tent gear was in the van so we had to wait ages for Harry and Cho who'd parked somewhere completely different. It was 1.30 in the morning before we even began to assemble the tents, which led to more sniping and swearing as we stumbled over tent posts and got told off by the hippies in the next- door tent. Eventually all the tents were pitched, which consisted of; two wizard tents (ordinary on the outside, large three room suite on the inside) and so one was for boys and one for girls, also there was two muggle two-man tents (were slightly moderated a bit inside, but only a little bit).  
  
The only thing between me and my night in a sleeping bag was the decision about who was going to sleep where. Draco had been alright up 'til now. Thankfully he'd slept for the last bit of the journey and woken up in a good mood, which lasted long enough for him to carry my bags up a big hill for me. I might be a feminist but I'm not that much of a feminist. He was now eyeing up a two-man tent and then eyeing me up and you didn't have to be a numbers geek to do the maths. The last thing on my mind though was getting naked and horizontal with Draco, I just wanted to sleep.  
  
It was at that last moment that Cho shunted Draco out of the way and got into the little tent. "Me and Harry are sleeping in here," she ordered in her don't-mess-with-me-voice. "Ron and Veronique are sleeping in the other green tent and then the two big tents are girls only and boys only. Goodnight!"  
  
Draco looked annoyed so I tried to look annoyed too.  
  
"Never mind, eh?" I said kissing him on the cheek. "I'll see you later."  
  
He grabbed me around the waist before I could walk off and pulled me tight against him. "Tomorrow. We'll find some peace and quiet tomorrow, promise." But it didn't sound like a promise; it sounded more like a threat. 


	7. At the Festival

Chapter 7  
  
Friday 25 August  
  
The festival was every bit as vile as I thought it would be. There were loads of beered-up muggle lads wearing those ridiculous velvet jesters' hats with the bells on -at least that meant you could hear them as they sneaked up behind you and tried to cop a feel. But even they weren't as bad as the masses of hippies in the healing field who were walking around bare- ass naked, ensuring I'd never be able to eat another cocktail sausage as long as I lived.  
  
After breakfast (well, lunch if we're going to get technical about it) of fresh donuts from a nearby stall, everyone spilt up and I was left alone with Draco. The girls had gone off to the fair and although they'd begged me to go with them, Draco had kept a tight grip on my hand and made it plain that we wanted to spend some quality time with each other.  
  
We started walking down the main stage and I forgot how nervous I was about what we'd planned to do once we were at the festival. He was just Draco, he wasn't scary. In fact, we spent the next half hour bonding as we moaned about the medieval bathing facilities (i.e.: there wasn't any) and the annoying hippie brats that kept running into our legs every five minutes. Why is it little kids have no spatial awareness?  
  
Draco and I sat and watched a couple of muggle bands and I thought, this is good, this is what normal couples at a festival do, as we sat on the grass, holding hands and supping lukewarm lager.  
  
In between sets, Draco turned to me and took of his shades. "I don't know how you do it," he said musingly.  
  
"Do what?"  
  
"You've hardly had any sleep, I know you're dying for a shower 'cause you've told me ten times, but you look fantastic, like you've just stepped out of a Fellini film," he said admiringly.  
  
I didn't actually know who Fellini was (although I guessed he was some hip foreign film director) but I pulled a face. I did not look fantastic, not by anyone's standards. I had a crumpled t-shirt on and a pair of pink peddle pushers that were already covered in grass stains and however much sun block I smeared on my face, my freckles were multiplying by the minute. I tugged my fingers through my tangled hair. "It's nice of you to say it, Draco," I began. "But I look and feel horrible. I don't know how you managed to stay smart." And it was true. Draco didn't have a crease in his Ben Sherman shirt and twisty leg Levis. He must have slept standing up. Draco smirked. "I'd be quite keen on getting a bit more rumpled." Here we go. I raised an eyebrow at him and he chuckled. "Let's go back to the tent," he murmured seductively. "And I'll show you what you've been missing." I didn't say anything for a while. The tension hummed in the air between us and I knew that Draco was holding his breath. I couldn't put it off any longer. "OK," I agreed with a sigh. And he grinned and pulled me to my feet. "You don't know how long I've waited to hear you say that," breathed Draco, leaning in to kiss me.  
  
It had taken us half an hour to get down to the main stage but with Draco tugging at my hand we made it back to the tent in ten minutes.  
  
I stood there feeling completely detached, almost as if I was outside of myself, while he unzipped the canvas. Draco held the tent flap open for me as I crawled inside; he was already unbuttoning his shirt as he inched towards me. This is it, I thought. I'm about to have sex in a tent, in the middle of a field, in broad daylight. It was not how I'd imagined this moment.  
  
Draco reached for me and pulled me down so I was lying on top of him and started to kiss me. His hands were stroking under my t-shirt as he whispered, "You've got too many clothes on."  
  
I wriggled my t-shirt off and wished this was happening to someone else as Draco began to fumble with the clasp on my bra. His eyes were roaming all over me and his hands weren't being gentle as he twisted at the fastening. There wasn't a whole lot of tenderness going on. But how could I tell Draco that I'd made a mistake when I'd promised him I'd finally do the deed? There wasn't any going back.  
  
Draco managed to get my bra undone and was trying to coax me to slip it off when we heard a scuffling noise outside the tent. I froze. Well I froze even more than I already was.  
  
"What was that?" I hissed as Draco rolled me over so he was pinning me to the ground.  
  
"What was what?" he said impatiently.  
  
"I heard a noise," I said. There was another scrabble at the tent canvas. "There it is again!"  
  
The next second, to my horror, Susan's head appeared through the flap.  
  
"Oh my God!" we both squeaked.  
  
Susan's head retreated and I grabbed my discarded t-shirt and held it to my chest.  
  
Draco, God rot him, started to laugh. "Foiled again," he said, lying back with his arms behind his head.  
  
I turned my back to him, did up my bra and pulled on my t-shirt before crawling out of the tent. And colour me puce 'cause every inch of me was blushing.  
  
"I'm so sorry," Susan gabbled. "I had no idea."  
  
"It's alright," I muttered. I actually wanted to get down on my knees and kiss her feet in gratitude but I managed to restrain myself. "What's up?"  
  
She pulled me away from the tents. "I don't want to be anywhere near him," she said scathingly, and then remembered what we'd been doing the last time she saw him and winced.  
  
"Forget him for a minute," I advised her, wishing I could do the same. "And tell me why you're so upset?" Susan gave a cry of frustration. "Penny has gone missing. I turned my back for a second and she'd disappeared."  
  
"OK, where were you?" I asked, my Miss Efficiency auto-pilot kicking in.  
  
"I was in the dance tent," Susan wailed. "But I've looked all over. And the others are all looking and I can't find her anywhere."  
  
"Alright, we'll get Draco to stay here in case she comes back and we'll go look for her," I decided. "He's got his wand and we've got wands between us. So we can sent sparks up, but remember to use the ones only visible to witches and wizards otherwise we're gonna have the Ministry of Magic after our blood. Ok? We'll find her."  
  
"Jeez, Hermione, I never knew you were so sensible," Susan exclaimed as I poked my head through the tent flaps.  
  
Draco was lounging back on a rolled up sleeping bag and smirked when he saw me.  
  
"Ah, there you are," he said wolfishly. "I was beginning to think you'd abandoned me."  
  
"There's been a change of plan," I said quickly, as he gave me an annoyed look. "Penny has gone missing. Susan's in a complete state and I need you to stay here in case she turns up. Alright?"  
  
"But Herm." he started to say but I waved at him vaguely and turned back to Susan.  
  
"You go to the Missing Persons' tent and I'll check the animal welfare stalls," I told her as we began to hurry down the hill.  
  
"Thanks Hermione," Susan said. "I don't know what I'd do without you. I can't seem to think straight."  
  
"You're just worried about Penny," I panted as we picked up speed.  
  
"Well, I'm sorry I've been such a Hag," said Susan.  
  
"Forget it," I said again, and meant it. "But please don't tell anyone about me and Draco.how we. what we were doing when you saw us."  
  
"Why would I tell anyone about that?" Susan shrieked. "It's scarred me for life!"  
  
I checked all the animal rights stalls and went back to the healing field but I couldn't find Penny anywhere. I'd bumped into Dean and Seamus but they'd had no luck either. I was just about to call it a day and head back to find the others when I thought I saw Penny in the crowd. I pushed through people to get closer but she'd gone. I looked around helplessly and then I saw her. She was with a group of Muggle lads.  
  
They were all staggering about and laughing, Penny included, but she looked pale and confused. One of the bigger lads slung his arm round her and the pair of them looked like they were about to topple over. I rushed towards her and Penny threw her arms round me.  
  
"Hermione! Lovely Hermione," she gasped. "You look all weird."  
  
Her pupils were massively dilated and she was all floppy as if she couldn't stand properly.  
  
I turned to the lads who were standing there giggling feebly. "What have you done to her?" I yelled at them. There was no response, just more giggles.  
  
I poked the one nearest me. "What has she taken?" I demanded grabbing the front of his t-shirt. I was half tempted to force him to tell me with magic, but the risk was too great, being in a field of Muggles and all. But he spoke in the end anyway.  
  
"Some stuff," he mumbled. "I'll let you have a tab for a fiver."  
  
"You stupid moron," I yelled (well actually I called him something much ruder than that.) "Was it acid or E?"  
  
"It was probably acid," suggested a boy from the crowd, which was rapidly gathering, around to watch. "You wouldn't spike someone E, it's too expensive."  
  
"Whatever," I said distractedly, turning back to Penny and trying to keep her upright with one arm while I still had a grip on the lad's t-shirt with the other. "You're lucky it was me who found you," I snarled at him. "If it had been her sister or one of our boyfriends, you'd be lucky to still have kneecaps." I gave him a hard push and he fell over on the ground, still laughing at some private joke. I glared at his mates but they were just gazing at me like I should come with subtitles or something.  
  
"What have you taken?" I demanded of Penny, who had her face buried in my shoulder.  
  
"They brought me some water," she said dreamily, "and it made me feel all funny."  
  
"Do you need some help?" asked the hippie boy. He told me his name was Azure as he helped me get Penny to the First Aid tent. He was so beautiful that in more normal circumstances I'd have been fighting for breath and losing myself in his amazing turquoise eyes, but I sternly told myself to stop it. This was not the time or the place. And besides, Penny was babbling about how much she loved me and how some people looked like they had animal spirits inside them and she was beginning to seriously worry me.  
  
Azure disappeared once we got to the First Aid tent, after telling me that if I ever needed his services again I could find him on the astral plane. The paramedics looked Penny over, told me that she'd probably had her drink spiked with some acid and the best thing I could do was sit quietly with her and make sure she drank plenty of fluid. Of course, then I realised I'd left my wand in the tent so I had to fill in a form to get the DJ on the main stage to make an announcement so the others knew where to find us. I was never going to another festival as long as I lived.  
  
Once the medics were sure that Penny wasn't going to OD (over-dehydrate), they led us to a little portakabin and I persuaded Penny to lie down. I sat there with her head on my lap while I stroked her hair and half-listened to her non-stop chattering.  
  
Penny was all sunburnt and the curly ginger hair that looked all rock chick on Susan, just looked messy on her. She was such a strange little critter but I had the feeling that when Penny got a bit older she was going to kick serious ass. Plus she was going to be really pretty once she did something about her hair and stopped hiding her face behind her hands all the time. I s'pose it was hard having a sister like Susan. Susan was so determined and cool that any siblings were forced to flail helplessly in her wake.  
  
Penny started trying to kiss my hands and I tugged them away gently.  
  
"I'm so glad you're here, Hermione," she said, trying to focus her eyes on me. "You're my friend, not just Susan's. I wish you were my best friend."  
  
"Of course you're my friend," I told her consolingly. "Why don't you try to get some sleep."  
  
"When I close my eyes I see this satanic version of Donald Duck's nephews," she informed me solemnly. "I wish I could remember their names."  
  
"Huey, Dewey and Louie," I supplied.  
  
Penny gave a chuckle. "You know everything."  
  
"Remind me to come and see you next time I need my ego boosted," I laughed.  
  
But then Penny clutched my hands tightly and started saying how she idolised me and she wanted to be just like me and have boys fighting over her. "You're my witch hero," she insisted, getting more and more distressed.  
  
"Please calm down," I begged her. She looked at me accusingly. "I'm not witch hero material," I told her bitterly. "My life's a complete mess. I'm meant to be making all these big decisions about my future but I can't even decide what I want to do tomorrow. And I don't have boys fighting over me, I just have Draco and, y'know, he's, well, he's Draco!"  
  
Penny was silent after my outburst and I thought she'd dozed off but all of a sudden she opened her eyes and hit me with a question from hell.  
  
"So why did you kiss Ron?" she asked baldly.  
  
"Me and Ron?" I whimpered. "That's a whole other story."  
  
But Penny wanted to hear it and so I told her. Everything. All the whys and wherefores. And all the stupid ways we'd managed to hurt each other. And why it was over now. And when I finally got to the end, which must have been an hour after I started, Penny looked at me with the steadiest of gazes and said, "Why are you with Draco when you still love Ron?"  
  
I started trying to deny it but Penny interrupted. "I hate Draco," she announced dreamily. "He tried to kiss me at your barbecue. After I'd seen you and Ron, I was coming downstairs as Draco was coming up. He pressed me against the wall and said he'd give me a go when I got a bit older. And then he kissed me and I didn't do anything because I knew that if he went upstairs he'd find you and Ron."  
  
"Oh Penny I'm so sorry," I had this strange urge to wrap her up and protect her so no one could hurt her. I also had a less strange urge to find Draco and kick him right in the place where he did most of his thinking. Penny might have been Planet Acid but she wasn't lying. And Susan hadn't got her version of events wrong either. It sounded exactly like Draco. I could even hear his voice in my head drawling out the line about waiting 'til Penny was older. I felt sick at the thought of what I'd been prepared to do to keep him. He must have been laughing himself stupid at me for months. He was evil.  
  
"I wish my first kiss had been different," mused Penny.  
  
"They get better," I promised. "When Ron kisses me it feels like, like I have this itch that only he can scratch but better than that."  
  
Penny gave me a smile and promptly fell asleep and I sat there going over my life since Draco had arrived to screw it up. By the time Susan, Dean and Seamus arrived; I was stuck into a big, bad gloom.  
  
When I started to explain what had happened to Penny, Susan burst into tears. Then Penny woke up and started crying too. I was severely tempted to join them. Once she's calmed down, Susan was so sweet to Penny. I thought she might have given her a lecture about no-good Muggle boys and accepting drinks from them, but she was more concerned that Penny was OK. I wished I had a big sister. I might not be in the mess I was in now. While I sat there cuddling Penny and Susan, Dean found a paramedic to give Penny another check. The medic reckoned that she just needed to sleep and that she might be a bit shaky tomorrow. Then Dean (his super-hero tendencies kicking in) picked Penny up and Seamus put his arms round Susan, and I trailed along behind them as we went back to the tents.  
  
All I wanted to do was go home, crawl into bed (preferably one with freshly- washed sheets on) and stay there 'til the 'rents got home. While everyone was fussing over Penny, I snuck into my tent and looked for the site-map to see how I could get home using public transport. I heard the tent flap open and prepared myself for a confrontation with Draco. I whirled round but it was Cho.  
  
"Oh, it's you!" I said, "I didn't mean that the way it came out."  
  
"Glad to hear it," she said reproachfully. "Well, you're a little heroine on the quiet, aren't you? I guess Susan's forgiven you for that Draco-gate incident."  
  
I shuddered. "Don't talk to me about him," I hissed. "He's as good as dead."  
  
Cho raised her eyebrows, opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it.  
  
"Sorry, didn't mean to take it out on you," I mumbled. "I bet you're fed up with me and my psycho-dramas."  
  
"Hey, what are friends for," Cho said lightly. "So what I actually came to tell you was that I've just spent a fiver on a box of Tampax. Rip off, much!"  
  
I goggled at her. "Does that mean you're not.?" She bounded over and hugged me. "My period's come! I'm not pregnant," she crowed.  
  
"Oh, I'm so pleased for you," I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. "You're happy, right?"  
  
"Ecstatic but I wish I wasn't surfing the crimson wave at a festival with rudimentary toilet facilities," she said, pulling a face.  
  
"I hear you."  
  
"So what has Draco done now?" Cho asked curiously.  
  
"Oh I don't want to talk about it," I groaned. "Put it this way, we are over. We're more over than any couple has ever been. But I haven't got the energy to go into detail. He's just pathetic, cheating, conniving." I ran out of adjectives and stood there, breathing and trying to calm down from my hissy fit.  
  
Cho didn't ask any more questions but said that she and Harry were going to get something to eat and then planned to spend what was left of the evening in the cinema tent and I'd better have a damn good reason for not coming with them.  
  
Draco was waiting for me as I left the tent.  
  
"There you are," he said with a flash of irritation. "I'm going to have to magically tag you."  
  
I was in no mood to have it out with him, especially as I could see the others (minus Veronique and Ron who'd been missing in action all day) watching, even though when I glanced over at them they all pretended that they were looking at something particularly fascinating on the ground.  
  
I glared at Draco, throwing every ounce of hatred I felt into it. He stepped back.  
  
"What have I done now?" he sighed.  
  
"Just get the hell away from me," I snarled. "Don't talk to me, don't touch me, don't even flamin' breathe near me."  
  
"Hermione you're being really stupid," he began but I cut him off simply by flouncing over to the others while he was still in mid-sentence.  
  
"Are we going to get something to eat or what?" I asked them and although the looks I got made it clear that Cho had filled them in on what I'd said earlier, everyone sprang into action and spirited me off down the hill, while Draco stood there looking furious. 


	8. The Pycho Banshee From Hell

Chapter 8  
  
Friday 25 August (but later)  
  
As we trailed aimlessly about the food stalls trying to find somewhere that didn't look too vegan or too likely to give us botulism, everyone kept a tactful silence about what had just happened between me and Draco. I could tell Lavender was dying to say something, but I think Parvati kept pinching her 'cause she kept rubbing her arm and whispering, "What did you do that for? I wasn't going to say anything."  
  
We were queuing up outside the cinema tent when I saw Ron striding towards us. Minus Veronique. It was funny, Draco could touch me in places that were meant to be erogenous zones and I felt nothing, but the sight of Ron in a tatty pair of jeans and an old t-shirt reduced me to roadkill.  
  
"Where's Veronique?" I heard Cho ask him.  
  
"I don't know and I don't care," was his tense reply. There was a muttered exchange between the two of them, during which I saw Ron glance my way before he hissed, "it's got nothing to do with me. She does what she wants, she always has. That's half the problem." And I couldn't help but wonder if he was talking about Veronique or me.  
  
As we pushed our way into the tent, the crowd surged forwards shoving Ron into my back and almost knocking me over. He yanked me to my feet, and then dropped his hand like I'd burnt him before pointedly going over to find a space next to Justin. And although I hadn't expected to drop Draco and pick up where I left off with Ron, I couldn't help the little pang of hurt that settled in my stomach.  
  
Saturday 26 August  
  
That night I didn't get much sleep. In fact, it had been weeks since I'd managed full eight hours without interruptions and weird dreams. It didn't help that the ground underneath my sleeping bag was lumpy and had more stones per square inch than your average quarry. Everyone else was fast asleep which just made me feel more frustrated and lonely. And when I did finally manage to catch a few zzzzzs I was woken up by a weird drumming noise outside. I pulled on my jeans and quietly clambered out of the girls' tent.  
  
I could hardly take in what my eyes were seeing. There were naked hippies. There were bongos. There were naked hippies making mucho noise with the bongos. I was tired, I was dirty and I had had enough.  
  
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" I screamed at them. "It's half five in the morning."  
  
"Hey we're just thanking the earth for welcoming us," breezed this middle- aged Muggle with dreadlocks who had a huge spliff in his hand. "Don't be so uptight, little sister."  
  
"You woke me up!" I yelled. "You woke me up with your stupid bongos."  
  
"Here have a toke on this," the hippie suggested brandishing the joint at me.  
  
"I don't want it," I protested. "I just want you to be quiet."  
  
"You're the one making all the noise," said a voice behind me. I turned round to see Ron standing a little distance away with an amused look on his face. "I was standing here listening to the bongos, as you do, when you come out of your tent and start screaming loud enough to wake the dead."  
  
"Why aren't you asleep?" was all I could think to say as the bongos started again.  
  
"I thought I'd get up early and brave the communal showers while it was quiet," Ron said.  
  
"I'd love a shower," I breathed.  
  
Ron smiled evilly. "It was nice, all that hot water and soap making me squeaky clean. And when I washed my hair, that was the best."  
  
"Stop it," I moaned.  
  
Ron walked over to me. "You look awful," he said, cupping my face in his hands. "You still not sleeping?"  
  
"Yeah," I sighed.  
  
"Listen, why don't you go and get your wash stuff and have a shower while there's no-one around and then I'll buy you breakfast and we'll watch the sun come up?" he suggested.  
  
It sounded like my idea of heaven. I nodded.  
  
"Off you go then," said Ron, reaching out to ruffle my hair but I pulled away. You could fry chips on my head. And besides, I was alright as long as Ron didn't touch me. It was when he touched me that things got icky. And not in a good way either.  
  
I never thought I'd strip off and have a communal shower. But actually there was a woman's shower block and there were cubicles and the two girls that I did see looked as embarrassed as me. As I stood under the showerhead and scrubbed off the dirt and felt the water raining down on me, I started to cry.  
  
I didn't even know why I was crying. I used to cry all the time. Even last year I could always be relied upon to start blubbing over silly things, but I was making great strides in self control these days. But in the shower I wept like my heart was breaking. And I guess it was the strain of exams and the whole Draco thing, but it was also because Ron was outside waiting for me and although he was offering me breakfast, what I really wanted from him he wasn't able to give.  
  
I finally emerged oozing cleanliness from every pore. It felt so good to be wearing a dress again. Ron was stretched out on the grass and I walked over to him and nudged him with my foot.  
  
"I'm starving," I said, as he sat up and looked at me. His gaze started at my feet and travelled slowly up. By the time he got to my eyes, I was shaking.  
  
"You're not going to scream at me for failing to have your breakfast ready and waiting?" he asked with a slight edge to his voice.  
  
"Not my style," I said lightly. "You've got the wrong girl."  
  
"Hmmm, if only you knew," said Ron significantly. He stood up and snaked his arm around my waist and I could have pulled away but it felt so right that I didn't.  
  
"Let's get ourselves fed."  
  
We brought coffee and bacon rolls and sat under a tree to have breakfast and watch as the sun climbed in the sky. We didn't talk, but we didn't need to. Instead we just leant against each other and were silent. Finding someone you can be quiet with is way more difficult that sustaining a conversation. Draco always used silence like a weapon, but Ron and I had always been good at companionable silences.  
  
By this time the sun was up and staying put. It was really hot. I reached into my bag for my sun block and started smearing it on my shoulders but Ron took the tube from me and began to smooth the lotion onto my skin. His fingers slipped under the thin strap of my daisy-covered sundress and his touch became less soothing and more caressing.  
  
I held my breath as he traced a finger down my spine to the zip. Ron hesitated for a second and then handed the tube back to me.  
  
"You'd better do the front," he said unsteadily.  
  
I shoved some of the cream around my neck and arms and then turned to face him. His eyes were very brown against his tan but there were dark smudges painted into the hollows of his face and I itched to smooth them away.  
  
"I know we've had this bad patch but I really want everything to be alright between us," I said carefully. "And I want you to know that all the times I said I didn't want to be friends with you, I was trying to convince myself."  
  
Ron got up and tugged me to my feet so I was standing with his arms round me.  
  
"It doesn't matter Hermione," he told me. "I've said and done things to you that make me not like myself very much but you'll always be my friend. Even if I don't act that way sometimes."  
  
"Do you mean that?"  
  
Ron didn't reply but he pulled me close to him and held me. My arms crept around his neck and he buried his head in my shoulder. I could feel his heart tapping out its beat through his thin t-shirt and I put my hand against it. Ron gently drew back.  
  
"I think if we're going to spend the day together we should have a 'no touching rule'," he drawled in that light, teasing way that I'd missed so much.  
  
I pulled a face. "You touched me first," I pointed out. "I was just returning the favour."  
  
"I'm serious," Ron insisted. "No touching, let's just do the friend thing."  
  
"I never said I was going to spend the day with you," I said jokingly and Ron arched an eyebrow and smirked knowingly.  
  
"Stop whining, Hermione or I'll make you spend all day in the trance tent."  
  
I really got into the whole festival vibe, man. OK, I didn't buy any stupid hats or get henna tattoos, but Ron and I saw some bands, spend an hour in the comedy tent, pigged out on junk food and bragged about how much we hated jugglers. Nobody knew us, nobody cared if we were dating or were friends who ended up kissing each other or even having an adulterous affair. Being anonymous can kick some serious ass.  
  
Ron stuck to his no touching rule even though our hands kept brushing and I wanted to grab his fingers and not let go. Walking round in the summer heat and not touching and the way Ron kept looking at me like I was a Cauldron Cake and he hadn't eaten for days made me feel restless. My whole body felt heavy and Ron and I were exchanging do many lingering eye-meets that the whole thing was getting a bit ridiculous.  
  
Eventually we made our way back to the tree where we'd seen the sunrise and I flopped down on the ground, exhausted.  
  
"Next time I go to a festival I'm at a hotel and having myself air-lifted in and out," I announced before digging into my bag to find my emergency bottle of nail polish to start a quick repair job on my toenails that were looking decidedly chipped.  
  
Ron collapsed next to me, his arms pillowing his head. I tried not to look as his t-shirt rode up to reveal several inches of tanned, taut stomach.  
  
"You're not like other girls," Ron said wonderingly, taking the bottle from me and hoisting my feet onto his lap so he could paint my nails.  
  
"How am I not like other girls?" I enquired.  
  
Ron shrugged. "I don't know any other girl who'd come to a festival with nail varnish and I don't know any other girl who'd put up with all the crap I've thrown at her and still want to spend time with me."  
  
"I've been pretty nasty to you too," I said. "Leading you on and backing off the next day."  
  
"I wish we could get back together now," Ron said casually, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on my toes. "I think we've both changed."  
  
My breath caught in my throat and I couldn't speak. Was Ron getting real or just playing "if only" with me?  
  
"I've thought about it a lot this summer," Ron continued. He paused. "Say something, Hermione. Even if it's only to yell at me."  
  
"I've split up with Draco," I muttered.  
  
"I know," said Ron. "And I've tried a million times to dump Veronique but she won't listen. Or she goes ballistic and smashes things up."  
  
"So what happened outside the café wasn't a one-off?" I asked.  
  
Ron snorted. "That was Veronique on a good day. I don't even like her, let alone want to be with her, but she's in complete denial."  
  
Ron had finished my nails now and I swung my legs off his lap and lay down on my side. Ron copied me so we were facing each other.  
  
"I have this theory," I told him. "I think Draco's been busy seducing me so you get the message that I'm out of bounds. Because if you're looking after Veronique then he doesn't have to."  
  
"I think you're spot on," Ron agreed. "I've thought that for months."  
  
"It's so messed," I said hopelessly.  
  
"But it doesn't have to be," Ron said fiercely. "If we were together and blatant about it, they'd have to let us go."  
  
"Rebound romances never work."  
  
"I only went out with Veronique to take my mind of you," admitted Ron. "And when I'm with you I don't feel like I'm on the rebound, I feel like I've come home. It's like my whole world is different shades of black and white but when you're around, everything goes Technicolor. You're still the coolest witch I know."  
  
"Do you think it would work this time?" I asked hesitantly.  
  
"It has to," said Ron firmly. "My heart couldn't take being broken again."  
  
"So I broke your heart, did I?" I snorted. "That's funny 'cause you broke mine too." But it wasn't funny. I'd never told Ron how much he'd hurt me before. And I knew that now probably wasn't the time or the place. But these things had to be said while I could still walk away. Though I knew deep down I'd probably have to get on my hands and knees if I wanted to crawl away from him.  
  
"Then we're even," Ron replied.  
  
I stared at his face intently. His deep brown eyes held my gaze.  
  
"I couldn't go through all that again," I told him. "Seriously."  
  
"I wouldn't put you through all that again, I promise."  
  
"Cause it's not too late to change your mind."  
  
"Herm stop it! Ron shouted. "Stop trying to find reasons why it won't work before we've even started seeing each other again."  
  
And there was so much I wanted to tell Ron, starting with the fact that I'd been in love with him for years, but there was a shadow looming over us and I didn't mean metaphorically. I looked up to find Draco and Veronique glaring down at us.  
  
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" Veronique screamed.  
  
Ron sat up while I put my hands over my eyes in the really mature belief that if I couldn't see them, they couldn't see me.  
  
"I'm with my best girl," Ron said quietly. "What does it look like?"  
  
"What does it look like? What does it look like?" spat Veronique. "It looks like that little mudblood has got her claws into you again."  
  
"Don't talk about Hermione like that," snapped Ron, jumping to his feet.  
  
"Look at her! She's pathetic," snarled Veronique and she did have a point. I was still lying on the ground with my eyes covered. Showing willing, I got to my feet. I didn't really know what to do once I was standing up.  
  
Veronique's face was red with temper (which made her hair seem unreal), Ron was grim-faced and Draco was smirking like he found the whole thing too entertaining for words.  
  
"Ron and I are getting back together," I said eventually, more to fill up the silence than anything else. I looked at Ron for support and he took my hand. The gesture seemed to trigger something in Veronique. Something violent and dark and incredibly twisted.  
  
"I didn't think sloppy seconds were your style," she hissed at Ron. "You know she's been having sex with Draco for months. And he wasn't the first."  
  
It was as if everything had come to a standstill and the only thing moving was Veronique's mouth as all this poison spewed out of it. I let go of Ron's hand.  
  
"It's not true," I whimpered, turning to Ron. He looked like he wanted to believe me but then Draco spoke up.  
  
"She's a real pro," he said to Ron in a conspiratorial way, like it was all lads together and they were down the pub. "I can't blame you for being interested, mate."  
  
"Is this your revenge 'cause I wouldn't sleep with you?" I demanded as Draco turned to me with a twisted little smile.  
  
"Hermione, you seem to forget I practically had to fight you off," he chuckled.  
  
Veronique gave Ron a triumphant look. "I told you she was a devious little slut," she said.  
  
"I'd rather be a slut than a psycho banshee from hell," I shouted at her, not bothering to point out that I wasn't actually a slut.  
  
"What did you say?" she said menacingly. Ron tried to step between us but Veronique sidestepped him and punched me hard in the stomach before I even knew what was happening. I doubled over, yelping in pain.  
  
"That's enough Veronique," said Draco in an icy voice.  
  
"I haven't started," she threatened.  
  
Ron took hold of her shoulders and told her to calm down but she twisted away from him and grabbed at my hair and started dragging me away. I tried to prise her fingers away but in the end I ran with her, it was either that or lose a good chunk of my scalp. The whole thing was surreal. Ron and Draco ran after us telling Veronique to leave me alone but she kept up this evil commentary about little mudbloods who couldn't keep their hands to themselves. I so didn't want to do the whole wizard duel thing but as we approached the toilet queue and the crowds started thickening I knew that it would be too risky to whip out my wand. Veronique had to slow down and I took the opportunity to dig my nails into her wrist.  
  
She let go of me, cursing and I pushed her away with great force. In fact I pushed her so hard that she lost her footing and slipped over the edge of the latrine pit into two days' worth of festival-goers' waste product, which was being saved, for compost.  
  
I didn't stick around. I mean, I'd just pushed someone into a pit-full of pooh. There wasn't really a right way to behave after that. Still clutching my tender stomach I took off as if the hounds of hell were snapping at my feet.  
  
By the time I got back to the tents I could hardly breathe. The others were sitting around a campfire they'd built, having a jamming session with the bongo players and they looked pretty shocked to see me come staggering towards them at great speed. For a moment I stood there, painfully winded and trying to catch my breath while they stared at me.  
  
"You alright?" Harry asked eventually.  
  
"I'm fine," I gasped because it seemed easier than actually trying to explain what had just happened. "But I need to go home. Now."  
  
"But Hermione you can't," Parvati protested. "We've still got two days to go."  
  
"No," I puffed. "You don't understand, I have to go, Harry, please drive me to the nearest station. Please."  
  
"Why do you have to go home?" Cho asked, getting up and coming over to me. She looked concerned and tried to put an arm round me but I flinched away from her."  
  
"I'm going to ruin things for everyone if I stay," I gabbled. "I'm fed up with me so you must be even more hacked off. Veronique and Draco told Ron.they said.I can't stay with them here."  
  
I dived into my tent and started shoving things into my backpack. I could hear a muted conversation going on outside but I ignored it. And I could see someone Lavender-shaped waiting for me outside, so I carefully pulled the pegs from the back of the tent and squeezed myself and my backpack (which were roughly the same size) out of the gap I'd made and sloped off before anyone could realise I was gone. 


	9. The Manor Park Hotel

Chapter 9 Saturday 26 August  
  
Forget what I said earlier about not crying 'cause as I walked towards the side road that led off the festival site I was crying like I'd never cried before. It always amazes me how you can cry, like, in public and people look at you in a horrified way but never actually ask what the matter is. All those hippies were meant to be into peace and love but they obviously weren't into spreading it around.  
  
Once I'd left the site and started walking in what I hoped was the right direction for the nearest town, I had to sit down on a grass verge because I was crying so much that I was starting to get hysterical. My breath was coming and going in strange, airless little gasps and my whole body felt floppy. I was also worried that I had internal bleeding from where Veronique had punched me. It certainly hurt enough. Maybe this was to be my fate; in the morning a farmer would find me dead by the side of the road and they'd put my name out over the radio in Florida so the 'rents could come home and bury me. Pull yourself together, Hermione, I thought sternly. Deep breaths and focus, I managed to stop crying and do something useful like put trainers on and then I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders again and started to walk.  
  
I didn't know what I was hoping to achieve by taking of but all I knew was that I was going home. Everything was ruined between Ron and me -there didn't seem to be any way that he'd want to be with me now. He probably thought I was a worthless little tramp and, besides, Veronique was going to kill me if she ever saw me again. As for Malfoy (yes I'm calling him by his last name now!), I couldn't even begin to fathom out why he got off being such a Grade A git.  
  
It was starting to get dark and I'd been walking for over an hour but the fields seemed to stretch out forever with no sign of civilisation in sight.  
  
I contemplated, just for a moment, no wizard money -so I couldn't get the knight bus -there's no port keys in this area -I can't apparate yet -nothing, hitch-hiking, but knowing my luck I'd have got picked up by a homicidal, axe wielding maniac and I had enough problems already. I walked on a bit more and was beginning to panic when I heard a car coming up behind me. I moved nearer the hedge but it was slowing down. I turned around and raised my arm to shield my eyes from the glare of the headlights when I realised it was the café van. My heart dipped. Ron had come to find me! But it was Malfoy impatiently winding down the window and telling me to get in.  
  
"*&%! Off," I snarled, walking away. Malfoy drove alongside me.  
  
"Get in," he said curtly. "It's dark and you shouldn't be out on your own."  
  
"It's a bit late for the concerned boyfriend act," I sniped.  
  
"If you don't get in the sodding van I'm going to put you in," he threatened, his voice simmering with barely controlled rage.  
  
It was either carry on walking, even though I was hopelessly lost, or get in the van with a vindictive ex-boyfriend. There didn't seem to be a lesser of the two evils options. With a sigh I eased off my backpack and threw it in the van and then climbed in after it. Malfoy reached over and slammed the door shut before turning the key in the ignition.  
  
"I've got better things to do with my time than drive around looking for silly little girls," he began savagely.  
  
"You have no right to start picking fights with me," I pointed out angrily. "I don't want to talk to you, just drive me to the nearest station."  
  
"The nearest station is ten miles in the opposite direction," Malfoy pointed out. "I'm driving back to the site."  
  
"I'm not going," I bit out.  
  
"Tough."  
  
I fumbled with the door-lock. "If you don't drive me to the nearest station then I'm getting out now," I told him. I was way beyond reason. "Even if I have to jump out of a moving vehicle."  
  
"OK," said Malfoy. "Look, I can't turn the van round, I'll carry on driving until we find a lay-by and then I."  
  
"Fine," I hissed. "And don't talk to me."  
  
We drove in silence. I hugged the backpack to my chest and stared out of the window at the black hedges that sped past. Of course, I couldn't keep quiet for more than ten minutes.  
  
"Why?" I finally asked. "Why did you do it?"  
  
Malfoy threw me a strangely amused look.  
  
"Do what?" he enquired silkily.  
  
"All of it," I replied. "Pretend that you liked me. Make passes at my friends. Play twisted little mind games to try and get me into bed. Why?"  
  
And Malfoy, instead of coming up with one of his clever little excuses, began to laugh. A nasty, mocking laugh that seemed to echo around me.  
  
"You're so naïve, Hermione," he eventually said. "You think there always has to be a reason for the things people do. Maybe I did it because I'm not a very nice person."  
  
"No, that's not it," I argued. "Admit at least that you've done everything you can to keep me and Ron apart so he can baby-sit Veronique on your behalf."  
  
"Ok, I'll give you that," said Malfoy evenly. "Some people would call her high maintenance but she's actually just a mad cow. The rest of it, Hermione, was fun. And getting to wrestle you out of your clothes, that was the most fun of all."  
  
My head was going to explode. Malfoy seemed to have turned into one of Dr Evil's henchmen.  
  
I opened my mouth to speak but Malfoy interrupted me.  
  
"No, before you ask, I didn't have a traumatic childhood. I just like playing games with people. I mean, I always hope someone will be clever enough to see through me, but you're all so stupid."  
  
I gritted my teeth, I was so tempted to just slap that smirk of his face, or even reach into my backpack for my wand but I strained myself and tried to change the subject.  
  
"Why did you come to find me?" I said.  
  
"Where's the devoted Weasley, you mean?" Malfoy smirked. "While everyone was running around and falling over each other to try and find you, I thought I'd get to you first but you're being no fun, Hermione. You're not playing anymore, are you?"  
  
I snorted. "Sorry, but I'm finding it hard to see the funny in this situation."  
  
Malfoy started laughing again. "Do you know what Veronique and I found really hysterical about the whole thing?" he asked me.  
  
"I'm sure you're going to fill me in on the details."  
  
"You and Weasley are meant for each other," he chuckled. "You're like a grunge version of Romeo and Juliet. It's really pathetic. And instead of lovin' it up, you let yourselves get distracted by idiotic ideas about principles and doing the right thing."  
  
His words were like little arrows stabbing me. He was right. I was pathetic. I'd been so busy trying to find reasons to stay with Malfoy that I'd completely ignored the obvious stuff. Like he was totally twisted and if I'd wanted Ron, I should have just reached out and grabbed him.  
  
"Oh, are you going to cry now, Hermione?" Malfoy wanted to know with mock concern. "Word of advice, sweetheart, it doesn't have any effect on me, it never did."  
  
Just then I saw a road sign that said "Manor Park Hotel 50 Yards".  
  
"Turn in here," I demanded. Malfoy ignored me and I did something I'd only seen in really bad action movies. I wrenched the steering wheel sharply to the left. Malfoy pushed me away with one hand.  
  
"ARE YOU TRYING TO GET US KILLED?" he roared.  
  
"If you don't pull in now, I'm jumping out," I warned him.  
  
Malfoy swore under his breath and started to back the van down the lane and into the hotel driveway. The Manor Park Hotel could have come straight out of a BBC costume drama. There were turrets, leaded windows and probably a few peacocks strutting about the place.  
  
"Oh yeah, this looks like a nice little B'n'B," Malfoy commented sarcastically as I opened the door.  
  
It was obviously way too expensive to stay there but I figured that they'd let me phone for a cab or something. I trudged toward the main entrance where a uniformed flunky was holding the door open for me. Malfoy came up behind me and grabbed my arm.  
  
"Come on, Hermione, stop being so melodramatic," he said lightly, "Get back in the van and I'll drive you into town."  
  
"Go away," I spat but he wedged his hand into my armpit and tried to pull me away.  
  
"If you don't stop I'm going to start screaming at the top of my voice," I promised. My wand would have been better, but as Malfoy held my arm in an iron grip that plan seemed to be at a standstill.  
  
Malfoy glanced at my deadly serious expression and then at the doorman who was giving him a very suspicious look.  
  
"Ok, dear," he said, saccharine sweetly. "If this is where you want to stay, you know I can't refuse you anything."  
  
I don't know what I'd expected once we got inside the foyer. Lot's of posh people dripping in diamonds probably, but instead there were lots of cute boys and cool girls. Kind of how I'd imagined the backstage enclosure of the main stage, if I'd actually been able to get backstage. But now wasn't the time to start wondering if that really was Kelly from Stereophonics ordering a round.  
  
Not with Malfoy still clutching my wrist in a death grip. I marched over to the reception desk to ask about using the phone. Before I could get the words out of my mouth, the receptionist greeted me with a warm smile. That was the first weird thing 'cause I didn't look like one of the Manor Park Hotel's regular guests or a rock star. I looked like an 18-year-old girl who'd been roughing it for three days. The second weird thing was when she opened her mouth.  
  
"Hello, are you from EMI?" she enquired.  
  
"Er, no," I muttered.  
  
"How much are your rooms?" Malfoy asked curtly.  
  
She gave him a filthy look and turned back to me with an apologetic smile. "We're practically fully booked," she explained. "We've got a lot of music industry guests here for the festival."  
  
OK, I had been planning to get the number of a cab company but now I came to think of it. The Manor Park Hotel could offer me something a whole lot better. Revenge. I bit my lip and tried to will my tear ducts to work as the receptionist looked at her computer screen.  
  
"I've only got the honeymoon suite available," she was saying. "That would be £650 for one night, breakfast included."  
  
Malfoy snorted. "Yeah right, Hermione. Come on."  
  
I burst into loud and noisy sobs. "Put it on your credit card," I wept loudly as people turned to look at us. "It's the least you could do after the terrible way you've treated me."  
  
Malfoy shifted uncomfortably his face flushing. "Stop it, Hermione. You're making a scene."  
  
I cried harder. "YOU TRIED TO SLEEP WITH ALL MY FRIENDS AND NOW YOU WON'T EVEN PAY FOR A HOTEL ROOM FOR ME!!"  
  
I glanced at the receptionist from under my lashes and she gave me an almost imperceptible wink before turning to glare at Malfoy.  
  
"OK," he snapped, fumbling in his pocket for his wallet and slapping his credit card down on the desk. "I'll take the room, will you stop bawling now?"  
  
The minute I saw her swipe his card through the till I turned off the tears and raised my eyebrows at Malfoy.  
  
"Tell her to put an extra £100 to the total," I demanded. Poking my wand from inside my sleeve and stabbing it into his stomach (without anyone noticing except Malfoy and myself). "I'm hungry and I need to make a transatlantic phone call."  
  
Malfoy gave me a look of utter loathing but did what I said. I waited for the receptionist to hand me the room key and then picked up my backpack and headed in the direction of the bar. Diet Coke first, getting rid of Malfoy second.  
  
I stood next to Cerys from Catatonia as I waited to get served and tried to act nonchalantly as some of the people whose CDs I owned gave me strange looks. It's not everyday you get to throw a full-volume hissy-fit in front of Damon from Blur. I found an empty chair among a group of what looked like American rappers (I figured there was safety in numbers) and sat down to sip at my drink and decide what I was going to do next.  
  
But Malfoy was already perching himself on the arm of my chair and slinging an arm round my shoulders.  
  
"I seem to have spent all day chasing after you," he remarked breezily. "You want me to push off, don't you?"  
  
"You guessed it," I said.  
  
"I must say I was impressed by your little scene at reception," he continued. "Didn't know you had it in you. You're a girl after my own heart."  
  
"Cut the crap," I hissed. "Will you just go?"  
  
"But you have to admit Granger," said Malfoy pretending he hadn't heard me. "I nearly had you. Five more minutes in that tent and you wouldn't have your precious virginity any more."  
  
"And Susan came along to save me from a fate worse than death," I said nastily. "Yeah, Malfoy, I fell for all your clever little schemes, you fooled me. Well done, round of applause. But it's over. I'm finishing it. Just go away."  
  
I reached for my wand again, but I suddenly realised that I wasn't holding it anymore.  
  
"I'm not going anywhere," Malfoy insisted waving my wand out in front of me and pulled me towards him. "I've just paid £750 for the dubious pleasure of your company."  
  
I tried to break free of his arm and reach for my wand but it was impossible. "Do you really think I'm going to go upstairs with you and have sex?" I asked him incredulously. "It's not going to happen. And anyway I've got the key."  
  
Malfoy was just about to come out with some more twisted logic when a big American guy who was sitting near me and had been listening to our heated discussion nudged me. I looked up expectantly waiting for the "Is this guy bothering you?" line, but instead he said, "Honey, I think your phone's ringing."  
  
I looked at him blankly before remembering that my mobile was in my pack, (my mother had insisted on buying me one last Christmas). All this time and I'd actually had a phone on me! I wrestled Malfoy's arm off and started burrowing for the ringing phone. By the time I found it, it had stopped ringing but Cho's number was the last one stored. I pressed 'Call.'  
  
She answered on the first ring.  
  
"Hermione?"  
  
"Cho! It's me."  
  
"Are you OK?"  
  
I gave Malfoy a sour look but he raised one eyebrow at me and carried on sitting there.  
  
"I'm fine. I'm sorry for taking off like that."  
  
"Never mind all that, give Ron a call. He's looking for you, he was going to try and find a cab."  
  
"Is he mad at me?"  
  
"He's worried about you. But if Draco's there you'd better tell him to exit sharpish."  
  
"Why? Well, apart from the obvious."  
  
"'Cause I've never seen Ron in such a rage."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"I'll see you when?"  
  
"Tomorrow. Hey, Cho?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Guess who's standing five feet away from me?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Kelly from Stereophonics!"  
  
"Hermione, are you on drugs?"  
  
"I'll tell you about it tomorrow."  
  
I cut off the call and started searching my address book for Ron's number.  
  
"Was that one of your little friends?" Malfoy taunted me. "Wondering why they're stranded without their van?"  
  
"Stop acting like someone from a second-rate gangster flick," I snapped. "I'm calling Ron now," I added.  
  
"I'm really scared," said Malfoy - sounding as unscared as it was possible to sound - as I pressed 'Call' again.  
  
"Hey," I said hesitantly when Ron answered.  
  
"Where are you? Are you alright?"  
  
"I'm at Manor Park Hotel."  
  
I heard Ron say something to someone.  
  
"Ron? Where are you?"  
  
"I'm in a taxi, I'll be with you in about ten minutes. Can you hold on?"  
  
"Yeah, but Malfoy's here and he's.I can't get rid of him."  
  
Malfoy looked quite pleased at my remark.  
  
"Are you alright?"  
  
"Yes.just get here soon."  
  
"I'm." There was a beep and my phone cut out. The battery needed recharging.  
  
I stood up and Malfoy was immediately at my side.  
  
"Going somewhere, sweetheart?" he asked.  
  
"Ron's on his way, he's absolutely furious with you," I said with some satisfaction. "Why don't you just go before there's some hideous scene."  
  
Malfoy looked unconcerned. "I'm not frightened of HIM. He couldn't run a bath."  
  
"Why won't you go?" I asked him tiredly.  
  
"Give me my £750 then," Malfoy replied.  
  
"I haven't got it," I told him. "And anyway I think you owe me."  
  
"For what? Services rendered? Hardly!"  
  
I didn't know what to do. If I went up to the room then Malfoy was going to follow me and he was in such an unreasonable and downright scary mood, I wasn't sure if I was going to be safe. But if I stayed where there were people and Ron came in and started a fight we'd probably get thrown out. I was just wondering whether I could give Malfoy the slip by disappearing into the Ladies when Ron suddenly burst through the door. 


	10. Romance, Suspence and Malfoy Bashing!

Chapter 10  
  
Sunday 27 August (just!)  
  
Ron looked awful. His eyes were holes in an ashen face and his hair was going in 50 directions like he'd been tugging at it in desperation.  
  
He looked around wildly before catching sight of me and was at my side in an instant.  
  
"Hermione!" he exclaimed, running a gentle hand down my cheek. "I've been going mad. Why did you skip out like that?"  
  
"It seemed like a good idea," I admitted ruefully. "All those things that she said." My voice tailed off. Ron gave me a tiny shake. "Like I was going to believe her!" he said incredulously. "Are you alright?" There was a cough behind us. "I'm sorry to break up this touching reunion," said Malfoy. "But Hermione and I were just going upstairs. She forced me to book a room and, well, you know how it is."  
  
Ron growled and lunged at Malfoy but I held him back.  
  
"Look, let's all go upstairs and sort this out," I suggested, moving towards the lift with my hand still clutching at Ron's t-shirt so he couldn't make any sudden moves.  
  
Malfoy shrugged and followed us.  
  
The atmosphere in the lift was hostile with added bits of hostility. I stood in between Malfoy and Ron as they glared at each other -the journey up to the fifth floor seemed to take an eternity.  
  
"It's room 507," I said absently as we walked down a thickly carpeted corridor and Ron smiled faintly.  
  
"That's the room you stayed in in Paris," he commented. Malfoy snorted.  
  
Ron stopped. "I've just about had enough of you," he told Malfoy in a cold voice that turned my insides to ice.  
  
"The feelings mutual," Malfoy sneered. "But I paid over 700 quid for this room so you can either give me the money or the pair of you can sleep in the van."  
  
Put like that, Malfoy did have a point and I could see Ron reaching the same conclusion, when Malfoy couldn't resist adding, "Mind you, I'd be happy to take £500 if you threw Hermione in as part of the deal."  
  
I jumped out the way as Ron slammed Malfoy into the wall and landed him a sucker punch right on the jaw.  
  
I didn't know who looked more surprised, Malfoy or Ron. Neither of them did anything for a moment but then Malfoy dived at Ron and they both went down on the floor. I stood there helplessly while they rolled about hitting each other. Ron eventually pinned Malfoy to the ground and kept punching him. It was horrible.  
  
"Stop it!" I screamed, trying to pull Ron off. "Stop it, both of you!" I dragged Ron off and picked up my wand (Malfoy had dropped) while Malfoy lay on the floor groaning his mouth bleeding.  
  
"I think you broke my nose," Malfoy gasped indignantly.  
  
"Good," said Ron tersely, putting a hand up to his cheek, which was starting to ooze blood where Malfoy had caught him with his signet ring. "I'll break your legs if you don't leave. And if you take the van I'm calling the police to report it stolen. Now *@£$ off and if I ever catch you within ten miles of Hermione I'll kill you." I stared at Ron, who now resembled Sirius that night when Peter was discovered to be Scabbers. Which is to say murderous.  
  
For once Malfoy had no snappy comeback. I was opening and shutting my mouth like a distressed goldfish as Ron took hold of my hand and pulled me down the corridor.  
  
The second that we got into the room and shut the door whatever adrenaline had been pumping through Ron's veins seemed to evaporate and his shoulders slumped as he staggered to the bathroom. I could hear him throwing up a moment later.  
  
He was leaning over the loo on his knees as I bent down to rub his back.  
  
"Hey Ron," I whispered. "It's alright. Everything's going to be alright."  
  
Ron wiped his hand across his mouth and sat back on the floor. "That was meant to be my line," he said with a weak grin. "I hate myself for what I just did. I scared the hell out of you, didn't I?"  
  
I nodded. "But you scared yourself more," I pointed out. "Why don't you have a bath and I'll ring down for some food." And then I left the bathroom because everything that had happened in the last hour had left me so freaked out, I was going to lose it big time if I stayed.  
  
I curled up on the bed and thought about ringing The Mothership but knew that the minute I heard her voice, I'd start crying so I phoned down to the kitchen and asked them to send up some scoff and drinks (although I was way more polite than that) and phoned Cho to let her know that the apocalypse had kind of been averted.  
  
By that time Ron was out of the bathroom. He seemed to have got himself under control. I was flicking the channels on the television when he sat down on the edge of the bed furthest away from me. He was wearing his jeans and not much else. I watched the muscles in his back moving as he towelled his hair dry. And the reason why I was so antsy became obvious. Malfoy was history but now it was me and Ron in a hotel room and sight of his chest and the way his jeans hung low on his hips. I mean I could just reach out a hand and I'd be touching him. I flung myself of the bed and reached for my bag. Ron looked at me in surprise.  
  
"I'm going to have a bath," I said in the same way you might say, "There's a plane about to crash land on our house."  
  
"You alright?" Ron asked me, looking at me like I'd flipped.  
  
"Yes!" I practically screeched. "There's food coming, you stay here."  
  
And I ran bathroomwards.  
  
I'd been immersed in bubbles for ten minutes when Ron knocked.  
  
"Are you sure you're alright?" he said through the door.  
  
"You can't come in!" I yelped.  
  
"I know," he sounded amused. "The food's here. They've brought Champagne, on the house 'cause it's the honeymoon suite or something."  
  
"That's nice," I said distractedly.  
  
"I could sit here and chat to you if you like," suggested Ron still in that amused voice.  
  
"OK," I agreed in a small voice.  
  
I never thought I'd have a conversation with Ron while I was stark naked. It seemed rude somehow even though there was a door between us. I told him what had gone down with Malfoy and he told me that Veronique had climbed out of the pooh pit and chased him back to the tents but he'd been determined to out-run her 'cause she had muck all over her. Then she'd got changed, flung all her smelly clothes into the campfire and made Malfoy give her a lift to the station.  
  
"He told me he'd taken the van without anyone knowing," I chimed in.  
  
"He would," said Ron darkly. "We thought you were still on the site. It wasn't until later that Susan realised you'd taken your backpack."  
  
"You know me, act first, think later," I said and Ron laughed.  
  
"Why are you laughing?" I asked.  
  
"It was the expression on Veronique's face when you pushed her and she realised where she was going to land," he said in between laughs.  
  
"Well she deserved it," I muttered.  
  
"I almost forgot about that," Ron said. "Is your tummy alright?"  
  
I looked at my stomach through the bubbles; there was a big cloudy purple bruise. "It's a bit tender," I replied. There was a pause and then Ron said in such a sultry voice that it made my toes curl. "Hmm, I'll have to look at that later."  
  
I looked up at the ceiling and then slid under the water where I didn't have to think about the ramifications of what he'd said.  
  
I'd just finished rinsing the conditioner out of my hair when Ron knocked on the door again.  
  
"Have you drowned?"  
  
"I'll be out in five minutes," I said, although part of me wanted to stay in there all night and the other part of me wanted to get the hell out of there and jump Ron's bones.  
  
I pulled on my pink spotty pyjama bottoms and a black camisole vest which were the only clean clothes I had left and forced myself to open the door.  
  
Ron was sprawled on his stomach on the bed, still wearing just his jeans and sipping Champagne. He gave me a lazy smile. "Hey you," he said softly.  
  
"Hey yourself," I murmured, hitching up my pyjama bottoms as they settled on my hips.  
  
Ron looked at me with interest.  
  
"Do you need a hand there?" he asked, arching an eyebrow provocatively.  
  
"I'm having elastic problems," I scowled, circling the bed warily. Maybe I could sit on a chair. In fact, maybe I could sleep on a chair, but Ron was patting the bed.  
  
"C'mon, I won't bite," he was saying. There was another pause. "Well, not unless you want me to."  
  
"Stop being so, so.seductive," I bit out crossly, climbing onto the bed and making sure I kept a safe distance away from him.  
  
Ron stretched out an arm and pulled the food trolley nearer.  
  
"Do you want something to eat?"  
  
I considered the question. I couldn't kiss him if I was eating. But then did I want to eat if I could be kissing him?  
  
"There's chips," Ron said cajolingly. "They're still hot."  
  
I scrambled towards him and investigated dinner then sat cross-legged next to him while I ate chips and drank champagne. It was so decadent. Ron rolled onto his back and watched me as I washed down the rest of the chips with what was left in my glass.  
  
"So you've finished eating, what are we going to do now?" he wanted to know as I stole a hungry glance at the way his chest rose as he spoke.  
  
I laid down next to him, keeping a foot of bed between us and I figured I might as well try and get some sleep. But slowly our bodies inched towards the middle of the bed and then I could feel Ron's arm pressing against my side. It seemed to burn where it touched me.  
  
I gave a desperate groan and flung myself on top of him. Ron was very obliging as I wound myself around him; I wanted to bury myself inside him. I smothered his face in kisses; his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks and then I bit his lower lip gently between my teeth.  
  
That was my undoing. Ron suddenly moved so I was trapped beneath him and caught my mouth in a deep kiss. My lips parted as he traced the contours of my mouth with the tip of his tongue before plunging inside.  
  
Kissing him was like standing on the edge of the world. And it was like all my best memories rolled into one. Fifty new dresses. A song I couldn't live without. The sun on my skin.  
  
We toppled off the bed onto the floor, clothes getting tugged away, both of us desperate not to lose contact with the other. Ron ran a hand down my body.  
  
"Mine," he said possessively. "You're mine and I love you. And I loved you, even when we were apart. Even when I thought I'd lost you."  
  
I stroked his face. "I love you too," I told him. The words sounded strange, I'd never said it out loud before, although I'd thought it for so long. "When we were in Paris, you stopped being a crush."  
  
Ron smoothed the hair from my face. "We don't have to, if you don't want to."  
  
I put a finger to his lips. "I do. But, you know, I'm still.It's my first time. I didn't, not with him. I think I always wanted it to be you."  
  
Ron smiled and nipped at my finger. "I wanted it to be me too," he admitted. "I'll be gentle, I promise."  
  
As I slid between the covers I wondered why I wasn't panicking like I'd been with Malfoy and I realised it was 'cause it felt right. Right place, right time and definitely the right boy.  
  
Ron hesitated before getting back into bed. "Hermione?"  
  
"Hmmm?" I said dreamily tracing a finger down his back. Ron caught my hand and pressed a kiss in my palm.  
  
"Have you got any. I don't have any protection." He said with an embarrassed smile.  
  
"In my backpack," I murmured. "I've got about 50." And then I started laughing.  
  
"What's so funny?" Ron asked, almost falling out of bed as he dragged my backpack across the floor.  
  
"I never thought when I bought them that I'd actually be using them, y'know, in a room like this and with you!" I said, giggling.  
  
"I'm glad you are using them with me," Ron said slightly huffily. "And not with him."  
  
"Don't talk about that loser, not when we're here like this," I pleaded. "It's just you and me. Nothing else matters."  
  
Ron gave a smile that was positively evil and rolled on top of me.  
  
"You're so sexy when you get stroppy," he purred. "Which is practically all the time."  
  
"Oh, shut up," I whined.  
  
And then Ron was kissing me hard and it was all I could do to remember to breathe. And when it finally happened Ron held me tight and whispered sweet things in my ear. He touched my skin wonderingly as if he couldn't believe that I was there and we were doing what we were doing. And folded me up in his arms and kissed my forehead when it was over and told me how much he loved me until I fell asleep.  
  
When I woke up the first fingers of light were beginning to creep through the curtains. Ron was asleep, his arm around my waist. I lay there for a minute trying not to think but it was no good. There was too much stuff going on in my head and I really needed to pee.  
  
I wriggled out of bed and hunted for some clothes. I might have had intercourse but I wasn't ready to strut around bare-ass naked. I found Ron's t-shirt and pulled it on before scurrying into the bathroom.  
  
While I was washing my hands, I looked at myself in the mirror. My face stared back. Same old Hermione. Same old hair that wouldn't lie flat. Same old eyes. I'd read in books about girls who'd lost their virginity and how they'd look in the mirror afterwards and realise they'd turned into a woman. But I still felt the same. A bit more uncertain than usual, but, yup, still Hermione. The earth hadn't moved but the feeling of closeness, the feeling that Ron and me were together had been wonderful and a tiny bit frightening at the same time.  
  
Yawning, I crept back into bed and Ron gave a sigh and pulled me against him.  
  
"What are you wearing?" he complained sleepily.  
  
"Your t-shirt," I sighed, fighting between my modesty and how nice it felt to have Ron's chest pressed against my back. Niceness won and I tugged off the offending item.  
  
"That's better," said Ron, sounding more awake. He kissed my shoulder. "I've missed you."  
  
"I only went to the bathroom," I protested.  
  
"No, I mean I missed you when we weren't together," Ron replied. "I missed your smile and your Hermioneisms and I missed you."  
  
I turned round so I was facing him. "I missed you too but I always knew we'd get back together," I said firmly.  
  
"Was it alright, before?" Ron asked, wrapping his arms round me. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"  
  
"It was fine," I told him. "It wasn't like how I imagined it."  
  
Ron frowned. "It gets better. I tried to take it slow." I smiled. "I didn't mean it like that." I traced his lips with my finger. I loved the fact that he was mine to touch again. "Isn't it strange? Sex, I mean. It's just so odd."  
  
Ron laughed, his eyebrows quirking upwards, a wicked look on his face. "Pity to let this bed go to waste."  
  
"We could always go back to sleep," I suggested with a smirk.  
  
"But I had something else in mind," he drawled.  
  
And the second time was different to the first. Better. Infinitely, wonderfully better. And then I slept in Ron's arms until someone tapped on the door and told us we had to check out in half an hour. And I was scared that when I woke up, the dream would have disappeared but it was still there. Ron was still there. Ready to go and holding out his hand for me to take.  
  
Sunday 27 August (much later)  
  
We drove back to the site even though I was contemplating emptying my bank vault so we could spend another night at the Manor Park.  
  
"Hmmm, it was sort of cool in a so-chintzy-it-made-my-eyes-hurt way," agreed Ron sarcastically when I put the idea to him, but he started up the van anyway.  
  
I narrowed my eyes at him. "It's not the décor I like," I hissed. "It's the fact that it doesn't resemble a tent."  
  
"You're such a princess," laughed Ron. "But I do have a vacancy in my two- man tent that you might be interested in."  
  
"I wonder what the others will think," I mused.  
  
"I don't care," said Ron decisively. "I don't care about anything except you. Do you know what I thought last night when you were asleep and I was holding you?"  
  
"What?" I asked in a trembly voice.  
  
"That you and me were inevitable. You're the only thing that makes me happy."  
  
"You make me happy too," I admitted. "But it's not like last time, is it? We're not just friends who snog each other anymore. We're, like, having a relationship."  
  
"I can handle it, if you can," grinned Ron. "You game?"  
  
I reached out a hand and gently pulled at his hair. "If you break my heart again, I'm going to kill you," I said quietly.  
  
Ron pulled me across the seat and wrapped an arm around me. I rested my hand against his shoulder.  
  
"It's not going to happen," he promised. That was good enough for me.  
  
I could hear the steady beat of his heart and smell the scent of lemons and soap on his skin. Ron sang along to an old song on the radio, one hand resting lightly on the steering wheel and the road stretched before us.  
  
Fine. 


End file.
